


There Are Many Things

by imogenbynight



Series: Solace [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, brief mention of April, post 9.03 from Cas' POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 09:54:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Dean and Castiel learn, through trial and error, how to be together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There is a kind of solace to be found in touch.

Before, when his body was nothing but a vessel in which he navigated the Earth, he was separate from it. Then, touch was utilitarian, even when it was pleasant. Always a means to an end. It was for manipulation alone, and had someone likened touch to exploration he doubts he would have understood.

Now, though, he understands with startling clarity that touch is not merely pleasing, but imperative—necessary somehow to the well being of his mind and his body alike. Essential to his existence.

First, he had found such comfort in April. Had known relief in the form of flesh pressed to flesh, of touch unfettered by thought or role or purpose. When the truth had come in the form of a blade to the stomach, there had been comfort in Dean’s hands, at his knee, at his shoulder, in his hands hauling him to his feet.

Hands, he realized then, whether smooth and soft or calloused and rough, were wondrous. In their movements all things were shaped.

As they passed through small towns, rumbled over rivers and under bridges in the car that was a home in motion he traced the lines in his palm with his thumbnail. He watched from the back seat as the wind swept Sam’s hair into waves and knew that touch could come from nature, and when Dean’s eyes met his in the mirror, crinkling at the edges into crows feet, he felt the gaze as keenly as he had felt his hands, and knew that touch was of the soul, as well.

Every touch was something new, told a different story, brought a different feeling to his bones.

Sam clapping him on the shoulder outside a diner in Illinois was _good nature_ , it was _welcome_ and it was _gratitude_. Dean’s elbow nudging him as they’d sat side by side in a booth by the window was _humor_ and _friendship_ and _hope_.

His palm sweeping across Castiel’s lower back as they returned to the car, his fingers dusting a wind-blown leaf away from his hair when they finally arrived in Lebanon a day later; those touches were harder to define, but still _good_ , somehow. Warming and honest and right.

As he’d showered in the bunker’s bathroom, listened to the water slapping on tile as he’d scrubbed at his hair, at his chest, the knots in his shoulders had loosened and he’d been calm. Relaxed. Soothed by the tiny yet incomprehensibly important touches. They made his new-found humanity sting a little less.

Briefly, standing in the spray, he’d seen the possibilities laid out before him—the promise of a human life and all it’s simple pleasures.

It hadn’t lasted more than half an hour before Dean was telling him to leave, and already he seemed distant. His words seemed to echo across an impassable chasm, and all the touches, every last one faded. Floated up like ash against a gray sky. Castiel thought of his wings and felt nothing.

Sam didn’t say goodbye. Dean didn’t drive him to the bus.

He walked him to the door, though, and stood on the threshold as Castiel stepped outside. His voice was tight as he said, “Make sure you don’t draw attention to yourself, okay?” and Castiel had made no reply. He couldn’t. Wordlessly, he took the bag he was offered and walked away. There was numbness, then, all encompassing, and he wondered at how lacking could have a feeling too.

Barely ten paces from the door he’d heard the clatter of bare feet on gravel, and turned back despite himself. Dean hesitated for a second, his eyes searching, before surging forward to hug him. But it was still a goodbye, and Castiel couldn’t bring himself to raise his arms.

Touch had become a bitter thing, twisted. Like April, Dean had drawn him in with kindness before turning the knife, and it was _unfair_. It was cruel and awful, and Castiel wanted to hate him for it. For telling him one thing with his hands and another with his words. For pulling him close as he pushed him away.

He untangled himself in silence and left, walked in the direction Dean had pointed in, and Dean didn’t call out. Didn’t follow any further. Castiel could feel his eyes, still, like fingers at his nape, and ached to go back. To demand a reason, to demand answers. Instead, he reached the end of the road and turned, felt the gaze fall away. Soon, he found himself at a bus stop.

When the first one came he didn’t get on. The second, he waved away. Some little part of him became convinced that Dean would appear at the corner in the little patch of light cast by the streetlamp. That he would laugh and tell him this was all some kind of joke.

To pass the time he looked inside the bag and found thick woolen socks and faded t-shirts, a wallet filled with fake ID’s and stolen cash and credit cards, a toothbrush, a road map and a cell phone with five numbers in the address book. His blade was there, too, and though it had been meticulously cleaned, it still seemed tainted by the blood of all he had slain. He drew the tip of his index finger along it’s edge and felt the cold.

Dean never came. Castiel climbed aboard the third bus and traveled west. He was alone for a while after that, drifting. He watched trees and hills and plains outside the window, felt his solitude heavy as a stone in his stomach, and spoke with strangers who told him their names and their troubles before leaving without more than a wave.

When he stepped off a bus at a rest stop in Rexford almost a week after leaving Lebanon, he’d been distracted by a book in a thrift store dollar bin, and missed it leaving. That had been as good a reason as any to stay.

That was a month ago, now.

Calling Dean had been a lapse, though he’d secretly been looking for an excuse for a while. The article in the newspaper had arrived at the perfect time, or perhaps the worst. It’s frustrating, how torn he is. Some moments he thinks he never wants to see Dean again; others he feels like he might not be able to breathe properly until he’s within reach.

Funny, then, that the moment Dean appears from behind a customer in the Gas n’ Sip, Castiel forgets how to.


	2. Chapter 2

The walls seem closer, somehow, and Castiel itches to be outside, out in the cool air. Dean grins at him, smirks, makes a joke. It's infuriating. As though he doesn't realize the damage he'd done when he made Castiel leave; as though he expects everything to be fine, to be normal. Not that they've had anything remotely close to that in years.

While they speak a queue begins to form, and from across the store Nora raises one eyebrow. It's a silent query he's come to know means “do you need help?” and he shakes his head infinitesimally before he looks back at Dean.

“I have customers.”

“What?” Dean glances over his shoulder at the people waiting, “oh. I'll just...”

He waves a hand around the store before wandering away, and Castiel chooses to act like he isn't there. Tries to ignore the frantic drumming in his chest that is equal parts anger and fear and happiness, and finds that it is easier said than done.

He serves three people in quick succession—prints their lottery tickets, counts their change, wishes them a good afternoon—and when he casts his eyes back around the store he sees Dean inspecting the display of potato chips as if they're the most fascinating things he's ever seen.

For a moment, Castiel just watches him. He looks the same, which makes sense—it's only been a couple of weeks, after all—but at the same time it's jarring. In that short time Castiel has seen himself change so much. But Dean is wearing that same green jacket, those same boots, the easy smile that Castiel wants to mirror whenever he sees it, despite all logic telling him he should stay angry. He can't quite manage it, though. The anger is still there, simmering beneath his surface with his hurt, a constant rolling pain at his core, but the sight of Dean makes it easier, somehow. He's the cause as well as the cure. It doesn't make sense.

As he locks the cash register, stepping out from behind the counter to make his way to Dean, Nora catches his eye. She's standing in the doorway that leads to the stockroom, and she gestures for him subtly, eyes flicking briefly to Dean and back again. When he nears her, she steps further back into the hallway and speaks in a low voice, quiet enough that he has to tilt his head forward to hear her.

“Are you alright?”

He's taken aback by the question, and for a moment he doesn't answer. Because he's not, really. Seeing Dean is unnerving. Nora looks concerned, though, and after a moments deliberation he tries for a smile.

“I'm fine.”

“He's the guy you mentioned when you started, isn't he? The one who... kicked you out?”

“How did you—?”

“Lucky guess,” a half smile flickers across her face, but it's sad somehow, sympathetic, “You can clock off at three if you like.”

“You'll be on your own.”

“It's not busy,” she says with a shrug, “and Justin's starting then anyway. I just figured, you two probably have some catching up to do, and if he's not in town long...”

Glancing back out to where Dean stands, inexplicably reading the print along the side of a can of re-fried beans, Castiel nods.

“Thank you,” he says, “that... that would be good.”

“Don't mention it.”

***

Time skips and starts while they work together, and despite his reservations, Castiel finds himself slipping into the same state of calm he'd felt back at the bunker. Conversation comes naturally with Dean in a way it just doesn't with other people. Silence, when they share it, doesn't demand to be filled. He's missed it more than he realized.

The hunt, though, leaves him shaken. When the nature of the deaths becomes clear, when it is no longer a case of monster but of angel, he feels not only responsible but small. Frightened. Without his powers, he doubts he'll be anything more than a liability in a fight. It doesn't take long for Dean to see it, and when he does, when he realizes that Castiel is scared, he doesn't tell him he's got nothing to fear. If anything he seems to agree that Castiel isn't up for the job. That stings more than he thought it would.

It isn't until a moment later, when Dean tells him he should go on his date, live a normal life, that he remembers this is just a visit. Dean is going to leave him again. Soon.

“Are you hungry?” he asks as they drive away from the crime scene, and Dean raises his eyebrows, glancing over at him.

“Sure. How long until your date?”

“Two hours. Though I understand if you need to get back to the hunt—”

“It's fine,” Dean waves him off, “we'll grab a bite.”

The tension in his chest eases a little, and he nods, looking out the window. Two hours isn't nearly enough, he thinks, but it's all they have. It will have to do.

***

The diner is one he's been to before. When he isn't at work he has taken to walking around Rexford, but when it rains he's forced indoors. The library is peaceful, but sometimes it's just too quiet and his thoughts seem too loud, difficult to ignore. The mall is generally more busy than he can bear, and he has no use for any of the things for sale in the store windows anyway.

Most days, he finds himself at Joe's.

It's a small place, wedged between a laundromat and a bank, and the sign in the window is lit up in red and blue neon. Dean holds the door open for him.

He doesn't eat much; just picks at a bowl of french fries while they sit together and tries to think of something to say.

“When did you get the job, anyway?” Dean asks him, leaning back in his seat and dusting salt from his fingers.

“Almost a month ago.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I didn't think it would interest you.”

A furrow forms in Dean's brow, and he shifts in his seat, clearly uncomfortable. Before he can say anything, the waiter returns to top up their drinks, and the topic is left behind.

Somewhere between Dean asking “Why Idaho?” and Castiel asking after Sam and Kevin, they lose track of time. At quarter to seven they hurry out into the street, and head for Nora's house. It feels rushed, and Castiel wonders how they passed so much time without saying any of the things they should have.

When he opens the door, Dean calls him back and he pulls it shut without hesitating. But there's still no apology for making him leave. Just some vague advice and a tight smile and a pat on the shoulder.

As it turns out, the advice is pointless, and he's left in the house with a crying infant and a sense of longing and no idea how to deal with any of it.

It isn't until an hour later that he realizes he's left his Gas n' Sip vest in Dean's car. He'll need to pay for a replacement. _That's almost thirty dollars_ , he thinks with a frown, and as he rocks Tanya back to sleep he wonders if it would be worth the inevitable ache in his chest to just call Dean back.

***

The rit zien finds him, of course. It's not surprising, when he thinks about it, but even as he's being forced down onto the floor of Nora's living room, his hand twisted back in Ephraim's tight grip, he asks himself _why_. He's in pain, yes. But it shouldn't be this deep. Shouldn't be this all-encompassing thing that he can't escape. The loss of his grace, the guilt of what that caused, all the mistakes and regrets of recent years—those are all things he's felt keenly in his little-over-a-month of humanity. But tonight in particular it seems worse, and it's all tied up with Dean. He shouldn't have such a sway over Castiel's emotions, but he does all the same. The more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that it's been that way for a long time.

Ephraim talks, and talks, and talks, and Castiel listens to his spiel as he tries to formulate some plan, some way to get out of his grip and to safety that won't put Tanya in harms way. Dean bursts through the door before he can come up with anything. He's never known such relief.

When he catches the blade Dean slides to him and drives it up into the rit zien's chest, searing white light rolls out in a wave. He breathes heavily, sinking back on his heels, and after a few moments Dean moves with purpose, pushing to his feet.

He kneels at Ephraim's side, checking for a pulse. When he finds none, he breathes out—one long, heavy huff of air as he stands. Castiel can't tell if it's from relief that the threat is gone or dismay that another vessel has been lost. He isn't entirely sure which he feels himself.

“You okay?”

Castiel nods, taking the hand offered to him and pulling himself to his feet.

“I'm fine.”

It's a half truth, and he expects that Dean knows it. The palm of his left hand is torn open, and he crosses to the sink to rinse away the blood. Beside him, Dean pulls a wad of paper towel from it's roll on the counter and without a word, winds it around to stem the bleeding.

“Where's Nora?” Dean asks, and this time, Castiel doesn't answer. He can't. It's humiliating, the thought of admitting how mistaken he'd been. Another instance of someone needing his help but not _him_ ; needing but never wanting. That bothers him now, in a way it never had as an angel.

He'd rather not relive the moments of his arrival here. He doesn't know exactly what he'd been expecting from Nora, but he does know that in these past weeks he's craved closeness. Contact. He's missed what little he had before.

Tanya chooses this moment to start wailing like a siren, and he avoids the question, pulling his hand away and leaving the kitchen to lift her into his arms. He hushes her as best he can, bouncing softly, and sings. It worked the last time, after all. Behind him, he hears Dean scuffing his shoes against the floorboards, and turns to see him leaning in the doorway, watching him with a strange sort of softness to his eyes, and he feels something catch in his throat.

Looking away from Dean, he keeps humming quiet against the soft wave of hair on Tanya's head. He lets the sound of her calming do the same for him.

“Is that _Sweet Caroline_?” Dean asks after a moment, and when Castiel looks back he sees a crooked tilt to his mouth, “how do you even know that song?”

He shrugs.

“I think she has a fever,” Castiel says, “I was about to take her to a doctor when Ephraim arrived.”

Dean moves toward him, reaching out for the infant, and Castiel lets him take her.

“She's a little warm,” Dean agrees, smoothing a curl away from her forehead. He looks comfortable holding her, and it makes sense in a way that Castiel is sure Dean would deny. He's a fighter, through and through, but it's not what he was built for. At his core, at the center of his being, Dean is a man made to love. To care.

The bathroom is down the hall, past a line of photographs of Nora's family, and Castiel takes Tanya back while Dean goes in search of medicine. She's stopped crying, but her face is still red as she stares up at him with wide, watery eyes. He sits down in the arm chair in the living room, shifting so he can hold her with one arm, and flexes the fingers on his left hand, rolls his wrist. It still aches, but it's bearable, and the bleeding has mostly stopped. He counts himself lucky that Ephraim hadn't done more damage.

Dean returns quickly with a small bottle, and he shakes it before measuring out a dose into the cap. While Castiel holds Tanya, Dean crouches down in front of him to tip it to her lips. She whines, squirming a little and pulling a face at the taste, but Dean makes a quiet hushing sound and somehow he convinces her to drink it. His hands are gentle when he swipes away her dribble with his thumb.

“What's her name?” he asks.

“Tanya.”

“Hey, Tanya,” Dean says, smiling softly, and she grabs hold of his finger and mumbles nonsense back at him until his smile widens.

Castiel aches and doesn't know why.


	3. Chapter 3

For a long time, there's nothing but the sound of the baby gurgling happily on Castiel's lap, squeezing Dean's finger in her tiny pink fist. Dean is looking down at her, raising his eyebrows and poking out the tip of his tongue, and while Castiel watches him he feels better than he has in weeks.

“How's your hand?” Dean asks after a while, though he's still looking at the baby, and his voice is quieter than usual, as though he doesn't want to disturb the little moment of peace they've found themselves in. Castiel doesn't blame him.

“Sore,” he admits, “I think my wrist may be sprained.”

Dean rises, slipping his hands under Tanya's arms to lift her from Castiel's lap.

“I'll check it, and then we need to get rid of Smitey McGee. How long until Nora gets back?”

A glance at the clock tells Castiel it's only half-past nine, but if Nora received his message, she's likely not far away.

“Not long,” Castiel says, watching as Dean lowers Tanya into her crib and pulls the blanket up to cover her, “we should move Ephraim first.”

Moving back to crouch in front of him, Dean shakes his head.

“Just let me make sure nothing's broken.”

Before Castiel can protest, calloused fingers are pressing gently on his wrist.

“That hurt?”

“Not really.”

There's a lump in Castiel's throat, inexplicably caused by the feeling of Dean's thumb dipping between the bumps of bone, over his suddenly erratic pulse. His skin feels warm. Electric. He wonders if Dean can feel it too.

“Good,” Dean tells him, and his voice sounds normal, steady in a way that Castiel doubts it would be if he felt that same thrum beneath his fingers, “can you make a fist?”

In answer he does, and Dean's hand doesn't move away, just drags up until his fingertips skim over Castiel's knuckles, testing, feather light.

“Nothing's broken,” Dean says after what feels like forever, dropping Castiel's hand and pushing to his feet, “I'll wrap it after. Let me bring the car around and we can move this fucker.”

All at once he's gone, out of sight down the hallway and out the front door, and Castiel takes a slow breath before he rises. His hand is tingling where Dean had held it, and his stomach feels impossibly light, a tremble at his core that he can't quite fathom. He squeezes his fist closed as he waits.

 

* * *

 

Ephraim's vessel is lighter than Castiel expected, and working quickly in the dark, they lift him into the back of the Impala. 

When the trunk is closed, hiding all evidence of the body inside, Dean wipes his hands down on his jacket. It's a habit of his, a little quirk that makes him unusually paranoid about germs, and considering his line of work, it seems more than a little absurd. Castiel tries not to smile about it.

“Okay,” Dean breathes, looking up at him, “I'll go deal with this, and I'll come back to get you when I'm done. Yeah?”

Something in Castiel's chest swells. The case is over, but Dean is coming back for him, and he feels warmth radiating outward, a calm settling over him that he hasn't felt since he'd been in the bunker's bathroom under the steady stream of water.

“Yes,” he agrees, “I'll be here.”

“You sure you're okay?”

“I'm fine.”

Dean looks at him as though he doesn't quite believe it, but after a few seconds he nods and climbs into the car. Castiel doesn't wait to watch him go. He doesn't need to. Dean is coming back. He's coming back.

Inside the house, he sets about picking up all the things his fight with Ephraim had displaced. 

Thankfully, nothing is broken, and it doesn't take long. He flushes the paper towel wrapped around his hand down the toilet, and unwinds more to press to the wound, just in case it starts bleeding again.

In her crib, Tanya is sleeping soundly, and for a time, Castiel stands by her side. He watches the steady rise and fall of her breath, the flicker of eyes beneath her lids as she dreams, and thinks of a time when he'd have been able to see what she was dreaming of. The memory of what he's lost still makes him feel a little hollow, bereft, but with the knowledge that Dean is coming back for him, that he will soon know a home, he thinks it will get easier.

The familiar rumble of the Impala's engine comes sooner than he expected, and Castiel returns to the door, watching as Dean climbs out, heading toward him up the path.

“That was fast,” he says once Dean is in earshot, “where did you take the body?”

Dean pulls a face and shakes his head, barely suppressing a shudder.

“Don't even ask. Nora back yet, or—?”

The sound of another car pulling into the short driveway interrupts them, and Dean looks over his shoulder as the door swings open. Nora rushes toward them, breathless.

“Is she okay?”

“She's fine,” Castiel assures her, “it was a... just a false alarm. Sorry to worry you.”

Nora slows in her step, breathing out in relief, and as she tucks a windswept strand of hair behind her ear her eyes flick from Castiel to Dean as if she's noticing his presence for the first time.

“Oh, hello again,” she says, though there's a question in her tone, and Dean rubs the back of his neck awkwardly.

“Hey,” he says, before sending Castiel a half smile and gesturing toward the car, “I'll wait.”

Castiel nods, stepping aside to let Nora back into the house.

“I won't be long.”

As he follows Nora inside, Castiel wonders if he should tell her that he won't be coming back to the Gas n' Sip. That he's going home. He decides against it—it'll lead to questions he doesn't have good answers for, and he figures he can send her a letter once they get back to Kansas.

While Nora fusses over her daughter, explaining to Castiel that the music in the bowling alley was too loud and she hadn't noticed her phone ringing, he keeps glancing toward the door, anxious to be in the Impala, to begin the long drive back as soon as possible. Nora notices his poorly concealed impatience. Turning away from the crib, she picks up her handbag and rifles through it.

“I won't keep you,” she says, handing him a few notes, “thanks again for tonight. I really appreciate it.”

She leads him to the door, and as they walk, as she tells him about her less than successful date, he feels regret that he won't see her again. Even if tonight hadn't gone as he'd expected, she's been a good friend to him since he's been here. Perhaps, he thinks, he'll try to visit.

Of course, he soon realizes he was foolish to think that he'd be going home with Dean. To think anything had changed. That he might actually be wanted. 

It's a few seconds after he walks out of Nora's house that Dean asks, “Where to, Cas?” and his heart sinks.

The question _hurts_. Digs into him with sharp claws and bitterness, and fleetingly he's glad he didn't tell Nora. He might feel as though he's had the proverbial rug pulled out from under him, but at least he still has a job. 

He doesn't answer Dean's question—he couldn't if he tried—so he just slips into the passenger seat. When Dean starts the engine a moment later, Castiel avoids looking at him. For a couple of minutes, he just stares out at the passing yards in silence. His wrist aches, and he rotates it slowly, feeling the bones pop. The pain of it is satisfying, somehow.

As they slow to a stop at the end of the road, Dean glances over at him.

“You know if there's a Walgreens around here?”

“Laramie Road,” he says flatly, pointing to the left, “near the library.”

Dean doesn't say anything else. He stays quiet as they wind through the streets, and when they pull up in the pharmacy parking lot he tells Castiel he'll be back in a minute. It's tempting to get out of the car and leave, but he doesn't. Some little part of him wants to drag this out; wants to stay in the warmth of the Impala, soaking in the smell of gun oil and whiskey and leather. He wants to remember it, to keep at least a part of this for himself.

Before he knows it, Dean is back, and he pulls open the passenger door.

“Give me your hand,” he says, crouching down, and Castiel does.

Dean takes the folded paper towel away first, gently dabbing the broken skin on his palm with cream that stings, and Castiel sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth. That same electric feeling he felt before is still there, but there's something tainting it now. Sadness, he thinks. Resentment for the fact that this care is meaningless. Anger, certainly. 

Touch, having briefly become a thing of comfort, has lost it's softness again. He wonders if this always happens. If to be human is to be constantly pulled in two directions, to feel in layers, in contradictions.

“What is that for?” he asks, pulling his hand away when the stinging becomes too much to bear.

“Antiseptic. Stops the cut from getting infected.”

“You usually use alcohol.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean shrugs, “this is better.”

“Why don't _you_ use it, then?”

“It's expensive.”

“So why—”

“Just _because_ , Cas. Seriously, it's no big deal. I just don't want you to get gangrene and die.”

Castiel squints at his hand.

“I highly doubt death would be a likely outcome from a cut this minor.”

“Yeah, well, I don't want to take any chances. I happen to like you alive. Give me your hand back.”

Pulling a face, he complies, gritting his teeth as Dean rubs in more of the antiseptic. Watching him work, Castiel feels as though he's on a precipice—as though there's some vital piece of information he's close to understanding, and he's just waiting, waiting to tumble down and see it. It's only moments later, as Dean wraps the bandage tightly around his wrist with nimble fingers, that he finally does.

It hits him like a blunt force in the chest, and he almost snatches his hand away. He loves Dean. He loves Dean, and God he doesn't want to. Doesn't want to love him when it hurts this much. Doesn't want to love him when he's just going to leave. Every thud of his pulse drums it further into him, and as soon as the bandages end has been fastened, he slips his hand free and grasps it in the other.

For all the chaos contained in Castiel's chest, Dean doesn't seem to notice. He just gathers up the wrappings and the plastic bag from the pharmacy and walks off toward a trashcan on the opposite side of the parking lot.

Leaning back against the headrest, his eyes closed, Castiel tries to convince himself that he's mistaken. He's new to this. Humanity. He's confused, that's all. This isn't love. Not that kind, anyway. It couldn't be. Mustn't be.

But he listens to Dean sigh as he slips back into the car, and he knows. It is. It's love, and it's the worst possible thing that could happen to him. Worse even than Ephraim. 

He keeps his eyes closed.

“So...” Dean says after a minute, and Castiel forces his eyes open to look over at him, “I'm gonna need an address.”

“For?”

“Your place.”

“Oh,” he nods, “of course.”

Briefly, he considers telling Dean the truth of where he's been living, but it feels shameful somehow, so instead he looks down at his bandaged hand, running his fingers over the pale fabric.

“It's near the Gas n' Sip,” he says, “just go there.”

“Done.”

The drive is uncomfortable. Quiet. When they finally roll to a stop in a parking space opposite the gas station, he pushes the door open quickly, hoping to get away as soon as he can even as part of him wants to remain in the car and demand Dean give him a solid reason why he can't come back.

He's surprised to see Dean climbing out of the drivers seat to follow him.

“What are you doing?”

“What d'ya mean?”

“Where are you… why are you getting out of the car?”

“Didn't check in anywhere yet, so I figured I'd just crash at your place.”

“Well you can't.”

Dean falters, takes a half step back as though he's been hit, and Castiel swallows his pride.  


“I don't...” he starts, hating how difficult it is to force the words out, “there's nowhere for you to stay. You can't 'crash at my place' because I don't have one.”

“The hell are you talking about? Where have you been sleeping?”

Castiel lifts one shoulder and chews on his lip before tilting his head in the direction of the gas station. Dean stares at it, incredulous.

“At _work_?” he asks, and Castiel lets out a breath as he nods.

“In the stockroom.”

“Why the... Cas, what happened to the money I gave you? You should've been good for a motel for a couple months at least.”

“I gave it away.”

“You _gave it away_?”

“I didn't want your money.”

“Cas—”

“So,” Castiel cuts him off, raising his chin, trying to appear unbothered by any of it, “as I have no place for you, you should go. It was... good. To see you. I appreciate your help. Tell Sam... tell him I hope he's getting well.”

“Get back in the car.”  


“No.”  


“Dammit, Cas, come on.”

“Why?”

“Because we're going to a motel. You're not sleeping here tonight, okay? You deserve... fuck, a real bed, for starters. Please. Come on, Cas. Please.”

It's not something he's heard from Dean often, the word _please_ , not for small things anyway, and it chips away at his resolve. With another sigh he looks toward the Gas n' Sip before nodding and digging his key from his pocket.

“Just let me get my things.”


	4. Chapter 4

There's a motel on the edge of town called the Sycamore Inn, and it's a dingy little place with six rooms and a busted ice machine near the office. Castiel stayed there for four nights when he first arrived in Rexford, but using Dean's money had left an unpleasant, bitter feeling in his chest, and as soon as he'd talked his way into a job at the Gas n' Sip he'd given it all away. He pushed wads of cash into the gloved hands of a tired-looking woman begging for change outside the supermarket, smiled at her screaming child, and made his way down the street with her gratitude following him like a stray.

He's been saving up ever since, carefully folding the money that he earns on his own and pushing it into his socks for safekeeping with a plan to find somewhere to live in a month or two when he has enough put aside. When Dean pulls the Impala into the potholed parking lot outside the motel, Castiel tries to give some of it to him to pay for a room. He's rewarded with a gruff snort and a slammed door.

Dean heads to the office alone, and Castiel waits, letting his breath cloud the window. He drags the tip of his index finger through the condensation, draws his name, his true name, and watches it fade. He wonders if Dean will see it when he's driving. If the glass will fog up on a cold day and Dean will catch Castiel in the corner of his eye; if he'd even know the name in Castiel's native tongue. If he'd care.

The inside of the car feels too small, now, too warm, and though he's certain it's just in his head, a reaction to the thoughts he's having, Castiel climbs out to lean against the hood. The cool metal grounds him, and by the time Dean comes back the feeling has waned.

“Number five,” Dean says, dangling a key in front of him, and Castiel takes it while Dean rifles through the trunk for his duffel.

The room is small and smells of stale cigarettes.

Two double beds stand on the left, their sheets an off-putting pattern of maroon and orange check that clashes with the avocado-green wallpaper, and an outdated TV set sits atop a noisy bar fridge on the opposite wall. Castiel carries his small bag into the bathroom and closes the door before Dean comes in from the car.

It's been a few days since he last showered, and the hot water feels almost like flying used to. It purifies him, lets his muscles go lax and his mind clear, and he stays under the spray for much longer than he should, holding his injured arm outside the shower to keep the bandage from getting wet. Despite his best efforts to avoid the topic, his thoughts return to Dean frequently. Thoughts of how gently he'd touched Castiel's hand as he'd wrapped it; of the way he'd smiled when he first arrived, and how different he'd looked to when he'd sent him away. Everything is conflicting, and Castiel doesn't want to leave the safety of the bathroom. Out in the room, Dean will be waiting. As illogical as it is, he can't help but think that the sooner he goes outside, the sooner Dean will leave.

It's only when the fingertips on his good hand begin to wrinkle that he reluctantly turns off the water.

When he makes his way back out into the room, clad in only his boxers and his undershirt, Dean is sitting on the edge of the bed closest to the door. His hands are opening and closing at his sides, and Castiel can tell he's working up to saying something. He doesn't want to hear it.

Carefully, making sure it doesn't crease, he hangs his shirt over the back of the chair, folds his jeans, and pulls back the covers on his bed. It isn't until he's sitting down that Dean seems to find his voice.

“Cas, wait. Can we just—”

“I'm tired, Dean,” he says flatly, “and I have to work in the morning.”

Dean deflates. It's oddly satisfying.

“Yeah,” he says, looking down at his hands, “okay.”

 

* * *

 

When Castiel wakes, there's light seeping out from beneath the bathroom door. He can hear Dean inside, the sound of water splashing on tile, the clatter of him dropping a bottle of shampoo, and for a moment he just lays there and listens. Apropos of nothing, he imagines a life where he'd hear this every day. A life where he'd wake and know that Dean is never more than a rooms length away, or better yet, an arms length. The lump that forms in his throat is sudden, but not entirely surprising, and he climbs out of bed to dress, pushing the thoughts from his mind.

When Dean emerges, he sees Castiel and pauses halfway out the door.

“Sleep well?” he asks, and his voice sounds rough and tired.

“Yes, thank you.”

The final button on Castiel's shirt doesn't want to go through the hole, and with his injured hand complicating matters he grunts. Dean is right in his space before he knows it, warm fingers pressing the button firmly into place before he moves away. His fingers skim over Castiel's throat in the process, and he's struck again by how unfair this is; to have touch but never enough.

"Thank you," he says again, though he only half means it.

Dean just shrugs off the sentiment as he sits to pull on his boots. He doesn't look at Castiel when he speaks

“Room's paid up until the end of the month.”

“Dean—”

“Please, Cas. I know you're pissed at me, okay? I get it. God knows I deserve it. But you shouldn't be sleeping on the floor of some stock room just because I'm an asshole. It's already paid for. Just... accept it. Okay?”

Running a hand back through his hair, Castiel swallows the lump in his throat and looks at Dean's bag, already sitting by the door.

“When are you leaving?” he asks, and Dean winces.

“Sometime today.”

“I have work in an hour.”

“We have time for breakfast, then.”

Castiel lifts one shoulder, tries to look as nonchalant as possible even as he wants to hold on to every last moment they can have.

“I suppose,” he says, and Dean smiles. It's hollow.

At Joe's, Dean holds the door open for him again. _Always hold open the door_ , he'd said last night. That he's doing it for Castiel now simultaneously irritates and embarrasses him.

“What?” Dean asks of the look he gives him.

“I'm not your date,” Castiel says bluntly, walking past, and hears Dean choke out a laugh. The sound of it splinters in him, ice in his chest as he sinks into an empty booth.

A tired-looking waiter makes his way over a few minutes after they've sat down, but Castiel hasn't even looked at the menu. Not really. He's staring at it, but the words are swimming. He wonders if it would be best to cut ties completely. To tell Dean that unless he intends to let Castiel back into his life, if not the bunker, that he'd rather he keep away for good. He wonders. It would be wise, he thinks.

“What can I getchya?”

“The deluxe breakfast,” Dean says, handing his own menu over, “extra bacon, eggs over easy.”

The waiter is staring at him, and Castiel blinks before passing back his menu.

“I'll have the same.”

“Out in a few.”

Dean drums his knuckles on the table, and it's infuriating. He's not speaking. Just sitting there, tapping, tapping, and Castiel can feel his hurt turning back to anger.

While he eats, Castiel watches Dean struggle to find words and refuses to help him. All he can think is that words mean nothing if Dean won't stay. If he won't tell him to come back. To come home.

Castiel stares down at the last dregs of his coffee, swirls them in his cup. It's almost half past six.

“I should go,” he says, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Dean's jaw twitch before he nods stiffly, pushing away his uneaten breakfast.

“I'll drive you.”

 

* * *

 

“Is Dean still in town?” Nora asks later that day, and he looks up from where he's crouched in the aisle, restocking Cheerios.

“No.”

An expression he thinks is somewhere in the vicinity of pity flickers over her face, and she hesitates, straightens a box on the shelf, before she speaks again.

“Did you two have a chance to talk?” she asks, and he can tell by her tone what she's getting at.

During his first shift here, Nora had asked him about where he'd lived before moving to Rexford, about why he'd left, and he'd told her some approximation of what had happened—that he'd briefly had a home in Kansas, and that he'd been looking forward to starting his life there, and that ultimately, he left because Dean kicked him out. She hadn't asked for any details at the time, but Castiel guesses she's come to a few conclusions on her own. He wonders how close they are to the truth.

“Briefly,” he says, “and he apologized for making me leave, but...”

“He didn't ask you to come back.”

“No.”

“I'm sorry, Steve,” she says, forehead creased with sympathy, “really.”

“It's complicated. Our... friendship,” the word sticks in his throat like the painkiller he took on his morning break, and it tastes just as bitter, “it's complicated.”

“Steve,” she says, after a pause, her voice dropping to something soft and gentle as she lays a kind hand on his arm, “I know some people in this town can be kind of... aggressively puritanical. But you don't have to censor yourself here, okay? I'm cool with it.”

On some level, he's proud of himself for working out what she means. That she's actively avoiding any outright mention of her belief that he is in some way romantically or sexually involved with Dean. On another level, though, and the one that he can't help but focus most on, he's mortified that his attraction is so obvious. Because if Nora could tell, it stands to reason that Dean could, too.

 _No wonder he wanted me to leave_ , he thinks, _he's uncomfortable being around me._

He swallows hard, trying to ignore the growing embarrassment and hurt in his chest, and looks at her with what he hopes is a grateful smile.

“Thank you,” he says, and her nose wrinkles as she smiles back, patting him again on the arm before she heads back to the counter.

“Don't mention it.”

 

* * *

 

Castiel receives a few text messages in the days after Dean leaves.

He doesn't reply, at first, too humiliated by the possibility of Dean knowing to bring himself to do it, but when that results in a panicked late-night phone call he learns to send back short responses. _I'm fine_ , he writes, _nothing new._

Nora asks him about Dean again on Monday afternoon, as he passes her can after can of tinned spaghetti, refilling the shelves.

“Have you spoken to him?”

“Who?” he asks, slicing the next box open. The blade in his hand is small and light, and he tries not to think about the one he carried before, the one he wielded for millenia.

“Dean,” she says, and there's a tone of _obviously_ to her voice that reminds him of Sam. He huffs out a breath through his nose.

“He's sent me a couple of messages.”

“Do you think he wants to get back together?” she asks, and his pulse speeds up so rapidly that he feels it flutter in his chest.

“We weren't... we were never together,” he tells her, “not in that way.”

“Oh, god I've put my foot in my mouth haven't I?”

“No. No, it's... I mean. I'd... I think,” Castiel lets out an uneasy breath, forcing himself to say aloud what he's only let himself think of before, “I would have liked to be. I still would.”

He clenches his teeth together, looking down at the tin in his hands, and shakes his head, trying to find the words to explain how impossible it is.

“But he's so _much_ “ he says, finally, “he's the best man I've ever known, and I'm just... nothing.”

The look Nora gives him is pained enough that he'd be fooled into thinking she'd been insulted personally if he hadn't been the one to speak.

“Look, Steve. I don't want to overstep, but... you're a great guy, really. You are. And if he can't see that, then maybe he's not worth the trouble. Yeah?”

Forcing out a breath, Castiel nods and hands her the tin.

“Yes,” he says, though deep down he thinks Dean's worth all the trouble in the world, “perhaps you're right.”

 

* * *

 

A week later, Castiel finds himself babysitting Tanya again. His nights at the motel, though much more comfortable than those he'd spent in the stockroom of the Gas n' Sip, have been long and largely sleepless. Despite his having only spent one night in the room, there are little traces of Dean everywhere, and the sight of the empty bed near the door makes him lonesome in a way he's never known before.

Even if Nora hadn't insisted on paying him, he'd have gladly done it just to spend some time in her warm home and talking to someone too young to have the capacity for comprehension.

This time, he makes sure to arrive early, and Nora answers the door with her dress slipping off her shoulders.

“Zip me up?” she asks, turning, and he obliges before following her into the living room where she shuffles through a pile of stuffed animals and eventually produces her cell phone.

“Are you seeing the same man tonight?” he asks, and she pulls a face as she nods, slipping her phone into her handbag.

“I know it didn't work out last week, but he's just so... he's just got one of those asses, you know?”

Nora laughs, and Castiel nods as if he has any idea what kind of ass she's talking about.

“At least we're actually going out to dinner this time. I'm not convinced a bowling alley was the best place to get to know someone,” she says, “fingers crossed tonight goes better. How do I look?”

She spreads her hands out, turning on the spot, and Castiel gives her a once over. Her green dress looks soft and floaty, and she looks very clean, he thinks, but he doubts that any of those would be the kind of response she's looking for.

“Good,” he says, simply, and she grins at him before darting in to kiss his cheek.

“Thanks again, Steve,” she says.

She's out the door in seconds, and after checking on Tanya, sleeping quietly, Castiel turns on the television. He flicks through the channels, and eventually settles on a program about people surviving in the wilderness. He finds their struggles to adapt oddly relevant.

Before long, his cell phone ends up in his hands, turning.

 _Dean_ , he writes, and accidentally sends it before he's been able to think of anything to say. He contemplates sending another message to explain the pointless first one, but finds he can't phrase his explanation in any way that doesn't sound absurd, and eventually gives up. The phone is banished to the coffee table, and while he waits for a reply he doubts will come, he watches a program about the solar system.

He learns the reasons why ancient humans elected to name the planets as they did, and a few minutes after it ends, Tanya starts crying. He lifts her into his arms and walks her around the house, singing low against her hair until her wails shift to whimpers. He doesn't return her to the crib.

She's comfortably warm against his chest, eyes flickering behind her lids, and has one tiny fist is curled tight around his index finger the way she'd done with Dean last week. The memory makes something pang in his chest.

He glances at the cell phone and tells himself he doesn't know what that feeling is, but he knows. Lying to himself just feels easier than addressing the problem.

Tanya finally drifts back to sleep at almost half past eleven, just before the sound of Nora opening the front door opening echoes through the house.

Castiel makes his way down the hall to greet her. She's smiling when she walks in, and she mouths _hi_ to Castiel when she sees Tanya sleeping in his arms.

“She's just settled,” he says quietly, passing her over, and Nora rocks her a little before gently lowering her into the crib, “how was the second attempt?”

“Good,” she says, “really good. He said the bowling thing was the worst idea he's ever had and promised never to try to seem cool again.”

“I thought being 'cool' was a good thing,” Castiel says, narrowing his eyes, and she huffs out a laugh that turns into a yawn halfway through.

“Sure, if you're a teenager,” she says, sinking down onto the couch, “but at our age I think we're better off just being ourselves.”

“I see.”

“I think you're getting a call,” she tells him through another yawn, pointing at his phone where it's flashing blue-white on the table. Castiel leans over and picks it up.

“It's Dean,” he says to himself, and Nora gives him a concerned look as he hits _decline_ , “I'll call him back.”

“Do you need a ride home?” she asks, and he shakes his head.

“No, it's not far,” he tells her, already heading for the door, and she follows to see him out.  
Truthfully, the motel is almost forty minutes away on foot, and it takes almost half of that for him to call Dean back. Castiel sinks down onto a park bench and waits for him to pick up. The cell phone hot in his hand. He counts the rings. There are nine.

“Cas?”

“Hey,” he says, and Dean makes an odd, strangled noise, as if he's choking on his own tongue.

“ _Hey_?”

“Did I say it wrong?”

“No... it's just. What happened to _hello_?”

“Apparently it is unusual to say hello all the time,” he says, staring into the dark, “or so I'm told. I'm trying to assimilate.”

“Fair enough,” Dean says, then falls silent.

Castiel waits a long moment, but when Dean doesn't speak he feels forced to.

“Why did you call?” he asks, and hears Dean make an annoyed sound on the other end.

“You texted me.”

“Yes.”

“Because...?”

Castiel picks at the outer seam of his jeans, pulling at a loose thread near his knee.

“I was bored,” he says.

“So no problems, then?”

“No.”

“Good,” Dean exhales, as though he were expecting bad news, “that's good. I was uh... we were busy. I would've called sooner but there was this whole thing with a ghost, and then we were on the road and, y'know, I couldn't call with Sam there, so—”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why couldn't you call if Sam was there?”

“Oh. Uh, no reason. Just. You know how he tries to weasel into the conversation when he can't hear both sides. It's annoying.”

Castiel narrows his eyes, because he knows no such thing.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he says.

“It's nothing. Forget it.”

“Where was the ghost?”

“New York,” Dean says, “we're gonna crash here tonight. Got a long drive back to Lebanon tomorrow. How have you been, anyway?”

“Fine. Just bored,” he says again.

 _Lonely_ is what he means. But he can't tell Dean that. It would only make him guilty. Castiel frowns. _Perhaps that's fair, though_ , he thinks.

“Lonely,” he amends.

“Cas—”

“I know. I don't understand _why_ , but I know I can't come back. I just... Nora told me it was a good idea to let you know this sort of thing, so I'm taking her advice.”

“Nora told you that?”

“Yes.”

“What else did she tell you?”

“That it's likely you aren't worth the trouble.”

Dean snorts.

“Yeah,” he says, and his voice sounds flat and hollow in a way Castiel hasn't heard since Dean found out about his deal with Crowley, "she's probably right about that.”

They don't talk for long, after that. Dean tells him to take care of himself and hangs up before Castiel can respond, and he's is left with the sinking feeling that perhaps Dean thought that by passing on Nora's comment he was saying he agreed with it. As he lays awake in his motel bed, watching passing headlights climb the walls, Castiel wonders if he should call back to clarify.

He wonders for hours. Eventually, he concludes that it's better this way. If Dean withdraws, it'll be easier. It may hurt in a way he can hardly grasp, but perhaps separation will make the feeling fade.

In the days that follow, he doesn't contact Dean, and Dean doesn't contact him, and he tells himself it's for the best.


	5. Chapter 5

Castiel's feelings for Dean do not fade. 

 

Every day, he serves customers and practices his friendly smile. He fills each hour with work, scrubbing the counter, sweeping the floor, stocking shelves and counting the register. When he returns to the motel in the evening he watches television until his eyes grow too weary to focus on the screen, before falling asleep under the blanket that is far more scratchy than he'd originally considered it.  


The separation is not helpful in the slightest. 

 

If anything, the feeling seems magnified by distance, and he begins each morning with the desire to call. To reach out. But the idea of being the first to break the silence puts a feeling of cold dread in his gut, so he doesn't. If Dean contacts him first, he reasons, then he'll try and find a way to make him come back. In the mean time, he'll ignore the feeling as best he can. 

 

Luckily, Dean does break first. Sitting on the edge of his motel bed, tying his shoelaces, he hears the ding of his cell phone on the side table.

 

Castiel reads his message, _**How's things, Cas?**_ a few times before finally replying, _**Monotonous**_.

 

Dean's answer is just _**sorry**_ , and Castiel finds he isn't sure how to respond, so he doesnt. He goes to work, and the empty apology haunts him for the entire day. A quiet presence in the back of his mind.

 

More days pass, and two weeks after the last time, he babysits Tanya again. According to Nora, Gary had turned out to be a far more interesting man than their first date had led her to believe, and she's been speaking about him near constantly. Castiel has a feeling that her enthusiasm about her new relationship is only serving to highlight his own misery, but he doesn't say anything about it. Just agrees to take care of Tanya and waves goodbye as she hurries down the front steps toward her car.

 

It's early, and Tanya is still wide awake. 

 

As she stares up at him from her bouncy seat in the living room, he tells her about how the past few weeks have dragged on and on as though they were months, how tired he is, how pointless it all feels. 

 

He tells her about saving a man from a place more fearsome than she will ever know, and how from that moment onward his entire existence took a sharp turn into uncharted territory. He tells her about falling in love. How much worse it is than it sounds.

 

Tanya just gurgles happily, reaching out chubby fingers and clasping in the air, and he allows a small smile, letting her clutch on to his pinkie finger.

 

“Are you hungry now?” he asks, and she shouts something that might be the word  _ baragouin _ , but is more likely gibberish. The irony is not lost on him, and catches himself smiling as he heads into the kitchen. He's just about to unscrew the cap on the jar of baby food Nora left out when his phone chimes, and he taps the screen, expecting it to be a message from Nora. It's from Dean.

_**  
Hey Cas, whats up? ** _

  
After a moment's consideration, Castiel replies that he's preparing dinner for a girl.   
  
It's not a lie, exactly, but he deliberately neglects to mention that the girl in question is just barely a year old. According to the movies he's been watching at the motel, if he makes it seem like he's making friends, moving on, it might make Dean want to come visit him again.

 

Dean just replies, _**good for you**_ , and Castiel frowns. He switches his phone off to stop himself from looking at it. It's raining when Nora comes back, and she insists on driving him home.

 

“I've been living at the Sycamore Inn,” he tells her, and sees a kind of understanding pass over her face, “just until I can afford my own place.”

 

“Hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?” she says with a smile, and he smiles back as she follows the quiet roads toward the motel.

 

The days wear on, and there are no further messages. Nora offers him a couple of longer shifts, and Castiel finds his savings adding up a little more quickly. 

 

There are three other clerks working at the Gas n Sip, and since he started he's been privy to the affection two of them harbor for each other. Guillermo had asked him on his third day if he thought Marie seemed interested, and the next afternoon Marie had made a similar inquiry. Both had, of course, made him swear to secrecy, and he's done his best to ignore their awkward romantic holding pattern ever since. 

 

They organise a friendly dinner at Joe's on a Tuesday night in July, roping Castiel and the other part-timer, Kate, into going along. When Castiel turns up, though, he finds out Kate had cancelled at the last minute. Halfway through the meal, Castiel has become so aware of the tension between the pair that he tells them that this is one instance where his presence as a third wheel might actually be more of a hinderence than a help, and Guillermo chokes on his root beer while Marie's face flushes redder than her hair.

 

They don't invite him along again, but Guillermo thanks him the next weekend for forcing the two of them to talk about it. Castiel tells him he's welcome, but the sight of them holding hands as they leave the Gas n Sip that evening makes something sour twist in Castiel's gut.

 

Jealousy, he thinks. Envy. 

 

Not for either of them, but for what they have. He tries not to think of calloused hands and freckled skin. He scrubs harder at the green stain on the floor by the slushie machine where someone spilled their limited edition Sour Apple Blast without alerting anyone to it and pushes the feeling down, down, down.

 

It's easier said than done, and that evening, Castiel finds himself at a bar a few blocks from the motel. He hasn't imbibed any alcohol since falling, knowing all too well from watching over Dean how terrible a coping mechinism it can become, but tonight he feels reckless.

 

After four beers, all consumed within the space of an hour, he's fairly certain that he's what Dean would call _three sheets to the wind_. He's thinking about the last time they spoke, about the way things were left and how he wishes they were different, when his cell phone buzzes against his thigh. He digs it from his pocket.

 

_** Don't be pissed at me, but your room is paid up for another month. ** _

 

He barks out a laugh, louder than he'd intended, and a woman sitting a few feet away glances over at him with a raised eyebrow. He blinks at her and raises the phone.

 

“Dean is telling me not to be mad,” he says, tilting the screen to show her, “but I _am_.”

 

“Okay,” she says, leaning away. She smiles before pushing off from her seat and moving further down the bar, and he calls after her.

 

“He's probably not worth the trouble.”

 

She angles her body away and doesn't say anything else, so Castiel shrugs, turning his attention back to the cell in his hands. Thanks to the phone's built in computer the poor spelling of his drunk fingers is corrected before it sends.

 

_** Are you going to come back? ** _

 

He waits a moment, and sends another.

 

_** You should. I miss you. ** _

 

And a third.

 

_** Also I am definitely pissed at you. ** _

 

For the next couple of hours Castiel drinks and drinks and watches his phone like a hawk. The bartender cuts him off at eleven, and he returns to the motel, collapses into bed, and wonders why on Earth people drink when they're miserable. He sure as hell doesn't feel any better for it.

 

That night, he dreams that he tells Dean the truth. That he tells him everything.   
  
In his dream, Dean touches his throat with his fingertips, soft down in the dip at the center, skimming up to his jawline, his lips, and Castiel wakes to a blaring alarm and the certitude that it could never be that way in reality. He feels sick. Tired.

 

There's a reply on his phone when he looks at it. A simple, _**Sorry**_ that came through around two a.m.

 

He regrets the messages he sent the previous evening, is embarrassed by his own frankness, and he can't tell if the queasy feeling in his stomach is a result of his shame or his hangover or the fact that Dean just brushed it off without really responding. He takes a couple of aspirin and goes to work, and when he looks at his phone again on his lunch break, there's another text.

 

_** Would if I could Cas. You know that, right? ** _

 

He's halfway through typing out a reply when a third comes through.

 

_** I'll try in a few weeks, ok? ** _

  
He smiles wide, something warm and pleasant bubbling up in his chest, and from the door to the back room, Nora speaks.

 

“You just win the lottery?”

 

Looking up at her, he tries to make his face relax, but it won't cooperate. He shakes his head.

 

“Dean's coming back to visit.”

 

“Ahh,” she says, taking the broom from it's place on the wall, “kind of the same thing, then.”

 

She winks at him before she leaves, and he looks back down at his phone, still smiling, as he types.

_**  
That would be nice. ** _

 

***

 

For the next week, Castiel feels anticipation building. 

 

He calls Dean three times, though he's busy on assorted hunts and unable to talk long, and tries to subtly steer conversation back to the topic of visiting Rexford. Dean doesn't seem to get the hint. It's infuriating. The thought of bringing it up again, though, is mentally exhausting. It feels like begging.

 

As Dean remains completely unaware of how much Castiel wants to ask about his impending visit, Castiel laments the lack of eye contact that phone conversation affords him. He's certain that the right look would get his meaning across without him having to outright ask.

 

By late July, Dean hasn't mentioned visiting again, and Castiel's anticipation turns to cold acceptance. Dean's got no intention of coming. Castiel feels like a fool.

 

Though the text messages have grown more frequent, more personal, he can no longer find it in himself to appreciate them. They're nothing but words, and they don't make up for the way his fingers itch with the need for contact. He's not under any delusions that Dean would respond well to his hands being grasped if he _were_ here, but he can't help but ache for it anyway. It's something in his gut, a hollow ache, and he's certain it's the pain that drew the Rit Zien to Rexford all those weeks ago.

 

A few days before the end of the month, Castiel rents an apartment on the east side of town. 

 

If he's being honest, he's had enough money for a while, but he's been putting it off—half of him still convinced that one day he'd walk outside after a shift and see a glossy black car waiting for him, ready to take him home. Now, though, he recognises it as a pipe dream.  
  
The apartment he rents is the third he applies for, and it's on the second floor of a pale brown brick building across the road from Rexford's bowling alley. The landlord, a humorless man with a frame as wiry as his mustache, looks over Castiel's collection of forged documents with a critical eye. Castiel shifts uncomfortably under his judgemental gaze.

 

“You have any pets?” he asks, and Castiel shakes his head.

 

The landlord deliberates for a moment, looks Castiel up and down for at least the fifth time, and slaps a pen and a sheet of paper down on the speckled kitchen counter.

 

“Rent's due on the twenty-eighth of every month,” he says, and when Castiel doesn't move forward he prods the page with a bony finger, “sign here, and you can move right in.”

 

The first month's rent and security deposit uses up two thirds of his saved money, and as Castiel signs he wonders what he needs to purchase first. A refridgerator would be ideal, he thinks. Or perhaps a microwave. Certainly some more clothing, now that he has someplace to store it. Furniture can come later.

 

The landlord leaves shortly after, and Castiel holds two keys in his hand. He attaches one to his Gas n Sip keychain and slips it into his pocket. The second he places on the lower shelf of the kitchen cabinet. He's got no use for it. 

 

For a long moment, he just stands in the kitchen, breathing. It's too quiet. With nothing else to do, he takes a slow walk through the small space, learning every corner.

 

The bedroom is tiny. The blue-gray carpet is pilled and worn, and it's sole window is barely three feet across. Through it he can see little but the road below and the fluroescent sign over the bowling alley, and he's glad for the vertical blinds that will block out the blue and pink glow when the sun goes down. The linoleum in the kitchen is old and peeling where it meets the carpet of the living room, and the bathtub under the showerhead is an unpleasant shade of pale orange that most closely resembles the flesh of a slightly spoiled apricot. In short, it's hideous.  
  
Castiel looks around the apartment and thinks to himself, _this is my home_.

 

That night, laying in his sleeping bag on the hard floor of the bedroom, the carpet scratching rough against his cheek, he taps out a message on his phone. 

 

_**I have a home, now. In case you and Sam want to visit.** _

 

He deletes the second half before he presses send and rolls onto his other side.

 

In the morning, a reply is waiting for him.

 

_** You should have had one this whole time. Sorry. That's awesome though.  ** _

  
He doesn't tell Dean it's okay, because it isn't. The phone gets left on the counter while he takes a shower, and while he washes he rubs at his stiff shoulders and knows he wont be able to put off buying a bed. 

 

It gets moved to the front of his mental list, and once he's dried and dressed he looks through the catalogues he found in his mailbox for one he can afford. In the end he's forced to choose between a narrow single with a mattress or a double mattress on it's own, and opts for the latter. He'd rather the extra room to spread out his arms and legs than an arguably pointless bed frame. He walks to the furniture store attached to Rexford's mall to arrange the delivery, and finds out he'll have to wait until the following afternoon for it to arrive.

 

With no other choice, he agrees, and resigns himself to another night of sleeping on the floor.

 

The money he's been keeping in a spare sock dwindles quickly. He spends half of what's left on a dark purple comforter and a squishy memory foam pillow, and carries them back to the apartment with some difficulty. Later, as he drifts to sleep to the soundtrack of the bowling alley's lights buzzing low, he's almost comfortable.

 

He tells Nora about his new apartment during his shift the next day, and the day after that she calls him into the back room to give him a large wicker basket. In it is a toaster and a kettle and an assortment of kitchen utensils, and before he can ask why she's giving it to him she speaks hurriedly.

 

“It was all in the garage when I moved into my place, it's just been gathering dust.”

 

“Thank you,” he tells her, and dutifully ignores the reciept he can see stuck to the side of the toaster box. Putting down the basket, he steps forward and hugs her. It seems like the right thing to do. She pats him firmly on the back.

 

“You're welcome, Steve,” she says, and squeezes him once before stepping back, “if you need help moving anything in, you just let me know, okay?”

 

“Thank you, I will.”

 

Nora mentions a couch her sister is throwing out a couple of days after that, and through some series of arrangements he isn't privy to, she has Gary collect it in his pick up truck that evening. When Castiel steps out into the street to meet them he sees it being lifted down from the back along with a mini fridge.

 

“She was throwing this out, too, and I knew you needed one,” she explains, and Castiel nods as she pulls it along on an orange hand truck he recognises from the Gas n Sip storage room, “give me a hand?”

 

Once the three of them have hoisted the fridge and the couch up the stairs, they end up ordering a pizza and talking for a few hours.

 

Though he enjoys their company, and considers himself very lucky to have made a friend as kind as Nora, he can't help but notice the casual way that the two of them lean in to one another, and he thinks again of the closeness he cannot have.

 

When they leave, he goes to bed. It's barely nine in the evening, and he's not remotely tired, but he doesn't have the mental energy to read. His mattress doesn't feel as comfortable as it has every other night. 

 

There's too much space. The blanket is warm but no substitute for companionship.

 

After an hour of restless tossing and turning, he texts Dean.

 

_** Where are you? How are you and Sam? ** _

 

Dean never replies, and Castiel falls asleep around midnight with his phone on his chest.

 

It's on a Thursday morning in mid-August, a week and a half after he moved into his apartment, that he finally hears from him. The buzz of his phone startles him to concsiousness, and Castiel blinks in the dark of his bedroom, bleary eyed as he reads the message.

 

_** You're not at work. ** _

 

He frowns. At this point, it's been so long, and Dean has been so terrible at keeping in touch, that he's almost more angry with him than he is glad to have a message. He types out a blunt reply.

 

_** That's correct. ** _

 

Only a few seconds pass before he gets a response.

 

_** Where are you? ** _

 

_** At home. ** _

 

_** Which is...? ** _

 

He frowns again, rubbing his jaw, and dials Dean's number.

 

“What's the address?” Dean asks without preamble. His voice makes something flutter in Castiel's stomach, and he hates him for it. Hates this whole situation.

 

“Why?” he asks, gruffly, thumping his head back on the pillow and shutting his eyes.

 

“What do you mean, _why_?” Dean asks, and Castiel imagines him pulling a face, “because I'm in town.”

 

Castiel's eyes snap open.

 

“Oh,” he says.

 

“Are you... if you're busy, that's cool. I just thought...”

 

“Adler Road,” he says, sitting up, “the building opposite the bowling alley. Apartment four.”

 

“Be there in a few.”

 

Dean hangs up, and Castiel looks around his room. Slowly but surely, he's added things to his home. As a result, it's untidy. He's untidy. He's had a cold all week, and his weekend wasn't supposed to start until tomorrow. Another text message comes through; this time from Guillermo.

 

_** Some guy was here looking for you. ** _

 

_** I know. He called. ** _

 

_** He the one Nora keeps lecturing you about? ** _

 

_** It's complicated. ** _

 

_** Always is. ** _

 

Castiel puts the phone down and makes his way out into the living room. There's a lingering smell of soup and onions that he's fairly certain originated in the apartment across the hall, and he pulls open every window that isn't nailed shut to try and let some fresh air inside before heading back toward his closet to find some clothes. The buzzer sounds before he gets there. 

 

With a quick glance in the bathroom mirror, he sees his hair is in disarray. His skin is flushed and damp, and the corners of his eyes are crusted with sleep. He's still in his pajamas. 

 

He looks awful. 

 

It doesn't matter. 

 

He opens the door, and Dean is standing there beaming with a potted cactus in his hands. He walks right in. Everyone else who's visited, Castiel notes, waits to be invited inside. It irritates him.

 

“Why are you here?” he asks, shutting the door.

 

“Wanted to see the new digs.”

 

“This is it,” Castiel says as he walks past Dean toward the kitchen, “not much to see.”

 

“Wanted to see you, too.”

 

“Not much there either. Why do you have a cactus?”

 

“It's... it's dumb. Housewarming thing, y'know?”

 

He wants to say that he was under the impression housewarming gifts should be useful, but he bites his tongue.

 

“Oh. Thank you.”

 

Dean shrugs, putting the cactus down on the kitchen windowsill before looking back at Castiel. His smile falters.

 

“Are you sick?”

 

“Yes. Nora made me leave work early yesterday.”

 

Dean's hand is on his forehead before he has a chance to move away, and he hates that he loves the contact. He wants to put his hand over Dean's and keep it there, pressed to his face, maybe his cheek, in his hair—

 

“You look like shit.”

 

Castiel steps back, frowning.

 

“If that's supposed to make me feel better, you need to work on your social skills.”

 

Dean laughs aloud, and Castiel chooses not to point out that he was being serious. He steps out of Dean's reach, hitting the on switch of the coffee machine he bought with his last paycheck.

 

“You take anything for it?” Dean asks.

 

“Not yet. Where's Sam?”

 

“Back at the motel.”

 

Castiel nods, listening to the gurgle of the machine, looking anywhere but Dean.

 

“Is there a case in town? I didn't see anything.”

 

“No... uh. The motel's in Wyoming. Jackson,” Dean says, and he almost sounds guilty, “we finished up last night.”

 

Looking over at him, Castiel sees Dean rubbing uncomfortably at the back of his neck.

 

“That's far.”

 

“Yeah, well,” Dean shrugs, “hadn't seen you in a while. Anyway, it's only like three hours drive, so...” he trails off, looking for something else to say, “did you eat yet?”

 

“I was still in bed when you sent me the message.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

“It's okay.”

 

“Go back to bed,” Dean tells him, “I'll bring you something.”

 

“What?”

 

“I dunno, I'll go get you some medicine and some breakfast. Where's your keys? I'll let myself back in.”

 

His regular keychain is on a hook by the door, but instead he pulls open the kitchen cupboard and takes out the spare key. As he hands it over, feeling Dean's wam fingers slide against his own, he tries not to think about how much he'd like for him to keep it.


	6. Chapter 6

He's drowsy and foggy-minded when he wakes to the sound of the front door closing. There are footsteps, muffled through thin walls. The cadence of them is familiar and somehow soothing, and it takes a moment for Castiel to remember that Dean is here.

When he does he feels a lightness that might be more to do with his poor health than anything else, but he lets it unfurl within him anyway.

There's the rustle of a plastic bag, the screech-whine-clunk of the top drawer being opened. Cutlery clinks together noisily as that same drawer is closed.

Castiel doesn't have much in the way of kitchenware, and he hears Dean muttering to himself for a while—something that sounds like _nothing in the right place_ , which is ridiculous because it's not his damn kitchen—before he seems to find what he's looking for.

It's dark in his room, his blanket soft and warm, and Castiel is swiftly pulled back into sleep by the heavy weight of his eyelids. He doesn't wake again until he feels a dip in the mattress. A gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Cas?”

Dean is sitting there, on the edge of his mattress, and for a long moment Castiel looks at him in confusion. Wonders if this is a dream; if his cold has become something worse, something with a fever, and this is some hallucination. Because Dean is here, and Dean is touching him. Still touching him.

It can't be real. He wants it too much for it to be real.

“You hungry?”

The smell of eggs and something sweet wafts in from the kitchen, and swallowing, Castiel nods.

“Wanna eat in here, or—”

Castiel shakes his head, blinking the sleep from his eyes.

“I'll get up,” Castiel says, and the words feel rough in his dry throat. Scratchy like sand or dirt or stones. Dean seems to be able to tell it hurts, and he winces a little in sympathy, squeezing Castiel's shoulder briefly before he finally lets go.

“Okay.”

Dean doesn't close the door when he leaves, and in the dark, Castiel pushes his blankets away and climbs out of bed. His tshirt is sticking to him, damp at the collar with sweat, and he peels it off. Tosses it into the corner of the room and pulls open his closet.

He doesn't have many clothes. After staring at the white button down and two tshirts that all droop sadly from their wire hangers, he settles on one with wide purple and gray stripes. It's long sleeves will keep his arms warm.

He can hear Dean out in the kitchen, shuffling around quietly, and as he pulls his shirt down over his head he catches his eye through the open door. Dean looks away quickly, returning to the task.

Castiel can't help but wonder what that means.

When he walks out of his room, Dean is waiting, holding a glass of water and a few pills. He hands them over without comment. Waits patiently while Castiel swallows them down.

“I made eggs on toast,” he says as he takes the glass back, gesturing over toward the coffee table where a plate sits, piled high. There's a mug of tea steaming beside it, and Castiel crinkles his nose.

“I drink coffee.”

“Yeah, well the girl at the store said it was good if you're sick, so... ” Dean trails off, shrugging, but he looks embarrassed, “it's lemon and honey or something.”

Sitting down, Castiel lifts the mug to his nose and breathes in.

“It smells nice, I suppose.”

“There's a whole box of it in the cupboard,” Dean tells him, and Castiel finally takes a sip. It's a little sour, but the honey balances it out well, and he hums in approval before returning it to the table.

The couch is a tired thing the color of dried oatmeal, and when Dean sits down on the opposite end with his own plate, the whole thing groans. Castiel can feel every inch that separates them like he's being dared to move. He ignores the impulse and begins to eat.

The eggs are scrambled, buttery and soft, and they settle warm in his stomach. He's reminded, in an abstract kind of way, of Dean's hands on his injured palm all those weeks ago. Of comfort and calm.

As he eats, Dean is quiet, and Castiel becomes uncomfortable in a way he has never been before. The silence between them is heavy, charged, tangible. His head throbs. He puts his fork down on the empty plate with a clink and looks over at Dean.

“Why are you really here?”

Dean's eyebrows shoot up. He lowers his own fork, his last mouthful of eggs hovering in front of his face as he looks at Castiel in confusion.

“What?”

“You don't just...” Castiel shakes his head, which pounds harder with the movement, “you don't just drive three hours for no reason. Did you need help with the hunt in Wyoming?”

“I told you,” Dean says, putting his fork down and looking at him properly, “we finished with that. And I didn't drive three hours for no reason.”

“Then _why_?”

There's an inexplicable sadness in Dean's eyes at the question, and his voice is soft when he responds.

“Is it so hard to believe I just wanted to see you?”

“A little,” Castiel says.

Dean looks as though he's had the wind knocked out of him, and a tiny part of Castiel feels a kind of spiteful happiness at the sight. It feels just, somehow. As though having Dean feel how he felt, how he _feels_ , is one step closer to them understanding one another.

“Sorry,” Dean says, and Castiel thinks he understands now, why it made Dean so angry when he kept apologizing before all this happened. Apologies mean nothing when the fallout is still raining down. He's still here, still on his own, and though he's carved out a life for himself in this small town he knows it isn't right. Isn't where he's meant to be.

But if Dean is sorry, perhaps he truly doesn't want things to be like this. Perhaps he really did just want to see Castiel.

“What are we supposed to do?” Castiel asks, staring at his plate with a crinkle in his brow that he's beginning to consider a permanent fixture when he's around Dean.

“What d'you mean?”

With a defeated sigh, Castiel looks back at him.

“I don't really know how to do this,” he says, gesturing between them, and for a brief and bizarre moment Dean's face twitches into an expression of fear, “if we aren't fighting something, if we aren't hunting something... what do we do?”

The expression disappears almost instantly, and Dean rubs the back of his neck.

“I don't know either,” he admits, “it's not like I have that many friends.”

Castiel picks up his mug and lets it warm his hands, swirls it around to watch a few stray tea leaves floating around the bottom. It reminds him of the program he'd watched at Nora's house about surviving in the wilderness. Of boiling dirty water until it's safe enough to drink.

“I'd suggest we watch television,” he says, watching the leaves, “but I don't have one yet.”

At that, Dean perks up.

“I know what we can do,” he says, “you up to leaving the house for a bit?”

“Why?”

“It's a surprise,” Dean says, getting to his feet, “go get dressed.”

 

***

 

Castiel loathes the mall.

It's too crowded, too loud, too much. From the look on his face when the pull into the parking lot, Dean doesn't seem to like it much more than he does, and that knowledge makes him strangely happy. As if merely disliking the same thing brings them a little closer.

“You sure you don't want to wait in the car?” Dean asks as they walk toward the sliding doors, glancing over at him warily, “you don't look so good.”

“Will this take long?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes," Dean estimates, and Castiel nods firmly.

“I'll come with you.”

They pause by a map near the doorway until Dean knows the direction to lead them in, and make their way around throngs of people in the noisy building. Once they reach the store, Dean has an incredibly boring conversation with a gangly teenager while Castiel waits to the side, looking over a table of sale items. He rearranges them into a more practical order and is curtly asked to refrain by a pretty but harsh looking woman with very white teeth and a mole on the end of her nose. He tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans and watches twenty screens in a row, all playing a cartoon film about a lost clownfish.

In the end it's nearly twenty minutes before they leave.

The clownfish still hasn't found his way home. Castiel wants to know what happens, but his desire to leave the mall is stronger, so he follows Dean as he pushes a shopping cart weighed down with a flat screen television.

They head back to the parking lot via the supermarket, where Dean adds boxes of macaroni and a bag of licorice allsorts and microwave popcorn to the cart. He grabs a bottle of honey and lemon iced tea and frowns at the label for a moment before taking another two, and when they get out to the car they have three bags of food that Castiel can't see any chance of them eating in a single day.

He tries not to get his hopes up that it means Dean might stick around for longer than that.

Helping to manuever the TV into the back seat is exhausting, and when they arrive back at his apartment Dean waves him away.

“I got it,” he says, “you just get the door.”

While Castiel waits on the couch, his comforter wrapped around him, Dean sets up the TV against the wall. An hour and a half after the decision to buy it had been made, it's up and running.

There's not much on, which Dean deems typical of a Thursday morning, and he leaves Castiel to watch a telenovela called _Marido en Alquiler_ while he cleans up the dishes from their breakfast and heats up a pot of macaroni. Castiel watches him more than he watches the TV. Everything feels strange. He wonders aloud if he has a fever.

Before he knows it, Dean is leaning over the back of the couch to rest the back of his hand against Castiel's forehead.

“You're okay,” he says after a moment, and heads back into the kitchen, only to return a few seconds later with two pills and a glass of iced tea.

Castiel takes them, pulling a face at the flavor of the tea—too sweet—and puts the glass down on the table. When he looks, he sees Dean back in front of the stove, stirring.

“You're very good at this,” he says, his voice scratchy, and Dean looks at him over his shoulder.

“Hmm?”

“Looking after people.”

Shrugging, Dean returns his focus to the pot.

“Kinda had to be,” he says, “Sammy got sick a lot when we were kids. He was like a magnet for the flu, and Dad wasn't really around, so...”

He trails off, and Castiel accepts the silence. It's an uncomfortable topic, Dean's youth. Not his _childhood_ , because he never really had one, but how his father unwittingly stole it in his absence.

In a strange sort of way, Castiel can relate. His own father wasn't around, either. In the back of his mind, he has a vague memory of a conversation with Dean about that similarity in their lives, and he frowns.

A vague memory.

His memories have always been exact. Crisp. Detailed.

Now, it seems, they're slipping.

There's a panicked feeling in his chest, like water rising, a wave, and he breathes deeply, catches the smell of sweet tea and pasta and Dean's jacket on the couch beside him, and tells himself it doesn't matter. It's better. To have the memories of millenia swimming around his human mind would be too much, he's certain of it. The panic pulls back a little. He reaches out and touches Dean's jacket, feels the worn leather under the pads of his fingers. Breathes deeply.

He can start fresh. Create new memories. Good ones, if he can help it. He might as well start now.

“I'm glad you're here,” he says, and looking back at him with a sauce-covered spoon in his hand, Dean blinks.

“Yeah,” he says with a soft sort of smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes, “me too, Cas.”

***

With Dean taking up one side of the couch and a gap between them that feels oddly intentional and slightly charged, Castiel tries to focus on the TV. He can't. He shifts around on the cushions and stirs the macaroni in his bowl but doesn't eat it.

“Why are you so fidgety?”

“You're still here.”

The words come out more blunt than he'd intended, and Dean raises his brow.

“You sick of me already?”

Castiel almost laughs. Of all the things Dean could ask him, he had to ask that.

“No,” he says, “I'm not. I was just... I suppose I'm not used to you staying.”

“You're one to talk.”

Castiel widens his eyes.

“Sorry,” Dean says.

“No, that's fair,” Castiel admits, staring at his half-eaten lunch, “I suppose neither of us has a particularly good track record.”

“Comes with the territory,” Dean says, drumming his fingers over the armrest beside him, “but while we're on the topic, I thought I'd crash here tonight if that's cool? Sam isn't expecting me back until tomorrow, so...”

“Of course. You're always welcome.”

Dean looks as though he wants to say something to that, but whatever it is he stops himself.

“Thanks,” he says instead, and it settles between them, taking up the empty space that Castiel wishes he could cross.

The rest of the day passes in the same way, lounging on the couch, snacking on junk food with the TV as their soundtrack. They talk occasionally, but not deeply. Still, Castiel barely notices what's on the screen. Dean leaves briefly at seven to pick up an order of ribs and roasted corn, and they eat with their fingers, crunching corn from the cob and tender meat from the bone.

Sitting there on the couch with a full belly and Dean a quiet presence beside him, it occurs to Castiel that he has never been happier than he is in this moment. He only wishes it could last.

But by half past eight he's flagging, sinking back against the cushions. Dean glances over at him when he yawns.

“You should go to bed,” he says, and Castiel frowns at him, “get some rest.”

“Not tired,” he lies, trying to keep the night for as long as he can.

“Bullshit, you're practically snoring,” Dean says, prodding him with his toe, “move it or lose it.”

“You were nicer when you were making me food.”

“Yeah, well, you'll thank me in the morning.”

That, oddly enough, is the thing that makes him push to his feet. The promise that Dean will be here when he wakes up. He leaves his comforter behind, assuring Dean that his sleeping bag and blanket will more than suffice, and after taking more of the flu medication he crawls into bed.

Before long, he feels hot all over.

A part of him wants to call out to Dean, to ask him press his hand to his forehead again.

And while he's wanting, he thinks, he wants him to press his fingers to his throat, as well. He wants Dean to reach out, feel the thrum of life beneath his skin and understand that he's _here_ , hopeful and wanting against all his better judgment.

But he's out there on the couch, and Castiel is laying in his bed, and though there's barely fifteen feet between them it might as well be fifteen miles.

He sleeps, eventually, but it's the restless kind, and around two in the morning, he wakes himself coughing. Only a few seconds pass before Dean is pushing open his door, lit up purple by the thin sliver of neon light from beyond the blinds. He hesitates in the doorway, a glass of water in his hand.

“You okay?” he asks quietly, and Castiel coughs again, sitting up and reaching for the water.

Dean carries it to him, waiting as he drinks.

“Did I wake you?” he asks after he's drained the glass and caught his breath, and Dean takes it back, shaking his head.

“Nah,” Dean says, “I couldn't get to sleep.”

“Are you alright?”

“That's my line,” Dean jokes, and Castiel raises his brow.

“ _I'm_ fine,” Castiel says, taking in the worn expression on Dean's face, the slope of his shoulders, the downward pull of his mouth, “but you're not. What's the matter?”

Dean looks as though he wants to say something, but he hesitates, staring at the glass in his hands.

“Tell me what's wrong,” Castiel says, “please.”

Looking down at him, Dean rubs the back of his neck, glancing out the door, and Castiel sits up a little straighter, shuffles to one side to give Dean room to sit.

“Please,” he repeats.

“You can't fix it,” Dean tells him, still standing, avoiding his eyes.

“That doesn't mean I can't help.”

With a sigh, Dean sits on the empty side, putting the glass down on the carpet. He doesn't look at Castiel. Just laces his fingers together in his lap with his legs stretched out, staring down at them with a tick in his jaw.

“I can't talk about it,” he says finally, without looking up, “not because I don't want to. If I talk to you about it, it'll put you in danger.”

“I'm always in danger.”

Glancing over at him in the dark, Dean shakes his head. His eyes catch the light from the window.

“Not at the moment, you're not,” he says, picking at the edge of the blanket beneath him, “you've got a good life here, Cas. I'm happy for you.”

“It's not that good.”

Dean smiles, but it's sad. Tired.

“Man, if I could...” he says, “I'd stay. I'd really like to stay.”

The words settle warm in Castiel's chest, and he sinks back against his pillow, eyes half lidded as he looks over at Dean.

“You could,” he says, and beside him, Dean sighs.

“No,” he says, “I can't.”

“And that's the reason it's not that good,” Castiel mumbles without thinking, slipping down into unconsciousness.

The last think he sees before he sleeps is Dean turning away.

He dreams of the moon breaking into pieces and falling to the Earth in great, glistening chunks. He dreams of oceans and lakes and rivers that can't be crossed, no matter how hard he struggles against the newly unfettered tide. He dreams in circles, of a furnace he can't reach, of a wide, aching wave of light that his fingers grace the surface of but never feel, but through all of the dreams that have him writhing, a warm at his side keeps him safe.

When Castiel wakes, early in the morning, Dean is still there. Curled up on top of the blanket and snoring, one hand splayed out between them.

If Castiel reached out, he could touch that hand.

He could.

He _wants_ to.

He doesn't.


	7. Chapter 7

Morning brings with it the sound of traffic, slow at first then rising, and through it all Castiel lays in the half-light and watches Dean like he did before he fell. He's peaceful in sleep. Worry lines softened, body warm and muscles lax. While he dreams, he nuzzles against the pillow and lets out a quiet noise of comfort. His lips lift a little at the corners.

Though his heart aches at the space he cannot cross, Castiel smiles too.

Shortly before eight, a door slams in the apartment building, and then there's the slap of sneakers on stairs as a kid races for the bus whose hissing brakes have just sounded loudly outside. The sudden deluge of noise startles Dean awake.

He sucks in a breath through his nose and sits bolt upright, reaching under the pillow for a weapon that isn't there. When he realizes there's no danger he blinks dully, and Castiel lets out an amused snort.

Looking over at him, Dean presses one eye closed as he stretches out his arms and collapses back against the pillow with a huff.

“I think we're safe,” Castiel assures him, “the bus is far too large to get in through the door.”

Dean shoves his shoulder with a warm hand. The motion leaves him laying on his side, looking at Castiel over the pillow.

“Smartass,” he says through a yawn, “you better not have given me your plague.”

“I didn't make you sleep in here.”

“Touché," Dean says, stretching like an oversized cat and rubbing at his sleepy eyes, "how're you feeling, anyway?”

Castiel considers the question for a moment. Tries to see beyond the haze of good feeling that laying beside Dean is giving him.

“A little better," he says eventually, "I haven't coughed in a few hours.”

“Good.”

Dean smiles widely, and in direct contrast to how calm the moment is, Castiel feels his heart race at the sight of it. It would be nice to kiss Dean, he thinks. The desire to reach out, to touch, is like electricity under his skin. They're only two feet apart. It feels even closer laying down.

As his smile fades to something softer, something sleepy, Dean's eyes never leave his.

Castiel is certain that it's not normal for friends to stare at each other this way.

He knows that if he did this with anyone he works with at the Gas n Sip, or with Sam if he ever saw him these days, it would be uncomfortable. They'd likely turn away after a couple of seconds. But Castiel never wants to, and Dean never seems to, either. Today doesn't appear to be an exception.

Maybe Castiel has had the excuse of being an angel, and then newly human, but that doesn't account for why Dean always stares back. Doesn't account for the way Dean's eyes flicker down to Castiel's mouth, either. The way he follows the dart of Castiel's tongue before returning to his eyes with no less intensity. _Perhaps_ , Castiel thinks in a sudden flurry of reckless hope, and stops the thought before it gets any further. Clears his throat to shatter the strange moment.

Dean blinks at the sound and sits up, cracking his neck.

“When are you leaving?” Castiel asks, more to remind himself that his presence here is temporary than out of any true desire to know.

"Soon," Dean says, looking at the time, "I told Sam I'd be back around midday. Wanna try to make it home to the bunker by tonight, so... nine-ish?"

"Oh," Castiel says.

"You feeling up to breakfast first?" Dean asks, "we can go to that place we went last time. Al's."

"Joe's," Castiel corrects him, pushing out of bed and heading toward the bathroom so he won't have to look at Dean's face, "just give me a few minutes."

When he comes back out, Dean is waiting on the couch. He looks uncomfortable. Claps his hands on his knees before he stands.

"Ready?" he asks, and Castiel almost wants to say no. He's not ready. Not for Dean to leave again, not so soon after he came back. Instead he nods and takes his key from the hook, and they make their way out to the Impala.

It still feels strange sitting in the front seat, and as they drive toward Joe's Castiel chews on the inside of his cheek. He glances over at Dean with a frown.

“Is Sam upset with me?”

“What?" Dean says, turning his eyes away from the road for a moment to look at Castiel in confusion, "no. Why would you think that?”

“When I left the bunker he didn't say goodbye," he says, and he sees Dean's mouth twitch, "and he never comes with you when you visit."

Dean shifts his grip on the wheel, and Castiel can see him casting around for an excuse.

"He's just... busy. With other stuff."

"You never say _Sam says hello_ ," Castiel adds, ignoring Dean's fairly pathetic attempt at deflecting, "when I know it's customary to pass on greetings. Also, I've sent him more than one message and received no response, when usually he's far more diligent about than you are. _And_ \--" he says, sitting up a little straighter and pointing at Dean as a memory comes back to him, "there was also the time you told me you couldn't talk on the phone because Sam was with you, which makes even less sense. So...”

“He's not mad at you, Cas.”

Castiel levels him with a look.

“Then tell me—is the reason Sam isn't talking to me related to the problem you don't want to talk about because it will put me in danger?”

Dean opens his mouth, presumably to deny it, but it seems to die on his tongue. He lets out a sigh as he pulls into a parking space.

"Yeah," he admits, staring at his hands, "it is. So can you just... can we leave it alone?"

"Is Sam in danger?" Castiel asks, "are you?"

"No. We're good. It's just going to take some time."

Reluctantly, Castiel nods.

"Alright," he says, "I won't ask. But if that changes, if you're in danger, please tell me. I might be powerless but I can't stand the thought of something happening to you--to either of you--without at least trying to help."

"I will," Dean says, and Castiel can tell it's the truth.

+++

It's almost half past ten when Dean leaves Rexford. He'll be arriving back in Jackson much later than planned, and Castiel can't help but be pleased that they lost track of time. It means Dean wasn't eager to leave. That maybe last night when he said he'd like to stay he'd meant it.

It's still too soon, though, and Castiel feels his heart ache when Dean drops him off outside his apartment.

"Take care of yourself," Dean says, the engine still idling, and Castiel unbuckles his seat belt, "and make sure you keep taking that medication a couple more days. You might think you're better now, but colds have a habit of coming back."

"I will."

He ducks down after he's out of the car, looking in at Dean one last time, and Dean gives him a little smile. It makes something flutter in his stomach, like that moment after tripping when you're not sure whether you're going to right yourself or fall. He thinks he knows the answer, so he tries to smile back.

"Goodbye, Dean," he says, and closes the door before Dean has a chance to reply.

+++

Castiel returns to work on Sunday, and though he's certain his cold is gone he feels dull. Lethargic. The thought of having to put on a friendly smile and deal with customers makes him want to curl up in a ball under the counter and wait for them to leave. He's not entirely sure why.

"You sure you're feeling better, Steve?" Nora asks him with concern as she waits on hold with the slushee machine maintenance hotline, and he makes an attempt to look less miserable.

"I'm alright," he says, and without really meaning to, adds, "Dean was here. He looked after me while I was sick and then he left again."

Nora lets out a sympathetic sigh.

"I don't know when he's coming back. And the worst part," he goes on, "the worst part is I knew when he arrived that it was temporary. That he'd leave again. But I still... I let myself..."

"You know what?" she says, shifting the phone to her other ear, "I think you need to find someone new."

"I don't--"

"Not a relationship, maybe," she says, lifting a hand, "but just... get him out of your system, you know?"

He frowns.

"What do you mean?"

"You know. Just... a fling. Hell, a one night stand."

"You're saying I should have sex with someone?" he says, tilting his head, and she laughs aloud.

"Can't hurt," she says, and Castiel shakes his head.

"I did that already," he says, "and it wasn't good."

"He was bad in the sack?" she asks, crinkling her nose and smiling.

"She... physically, I suppose it was enjoyable. Up to a point. But she wasn't a nice person, in the end."

  
It's the biggest understatement he can imagine, really, considering the fact that the reaper had killed him the morning after, but he has a feeling that the whole truth wouldn't go over so well. Nora pets him on the arm.

  
"Now that I'm thinking about it," he goes on, "I think I just wanted the... closeness, I suppose. But she didn't... it wasn't right."

"I guess it'll just take time, then," she says, "and I know it's not what you want to hear, but unless you come right out and tell Dean what you're feeling, this is just going to keep--hello? Yes, thanks."

Looking at him apologetically, Nora turns her attention to the person on the phone, and Castiel considers her point. He knows she's right. But that, he thinks, picking up the broom from where it's resting against the wall, is easier said than done.

+++

The following Friday night, Castiel is sitting on his couch, just having settled down to watch a program about space that seems to be in the same series as the one he'd watched at Nora's house, when the sound of the buzzer makes him jerk in surprise.

When he opens the door, Dean's standing there with a six pack, a bag of tortilla chips, and a tight smile.

"Hey, Cas," he says, and Castiel blinks at him. He takes the bag of chips when Dean holds them out.

"Hi," Castiel says, a little lost. Dean pats him on the shoulder, moving past him to dump the six pack on the coffee table, "I wasn't expecting you."

“Had kind of a rough hunt yesterday,” Dean says, sinking back against the couch and popping the tab on a can of beer with his thumbnail, “me and Sam figured we'd both earned a few days off.”

“Is he alright?”

“He's fine. Just hanging out at the bunker with Kevin. They were talking about rearranging the library or some crap," Dean snorts to himself, "neither of them know how to relax."

"What was the hunt?"

"Changelings," Dean swallows, lets out a breath, and Castiel move to sit beside him, "wasn't pretty. Didn't get there in time. One of the kids didn't make it."

“I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean shrugs, grabs another beer from the six pack and holds it out, “what're you gonna do?"

They work through the beers Dean brought, then the couple of bottles Castiel had in the fridge--a brand, it turns out, that Dean approves of--and as the night wears on Dean's smiles become less forced. The stress of the hunt that sent him here slowly fading until he's leaning comfortably back against the cushions and cradling his drink.

"Sorry I just turned up," he says after a few minutes of silence, "probably should've called, but I just--"

"I wasn't doing anything," Castiel shrugs.

"Thanks," Dean says, and he reaches out to grasp his shoulder.

"For what?"

"Putting up with my shit," Dean says with a bitter laugh, "I know I haven't been the best friend to you. I know I've screwed you around a lot. But you're always... you still... just thanks."

The look Dean's giving him is soft, maybe even tender, and when he pulls Castiel into an awkward hug, Castiel is so lost in the moment that he doesn't even notice the beer falling over between them until Dean jerks back.

"Dammit," Dean says, attempting to right the bottle before it empties, but it's too late. The cushion is soaked through. Dean looks flushed, embarrassed far more than a simple accident should have made him, and Castiel shakes his head, standing up.

"It's alright," he says, "it'll dry."

"But now we have nowhere to sit," Dean says, and Castiel looks at the time. Nine o'clock.

"It's still early," he says, "lets go out. There's a bar a few blocks away."

+++

The bar is the same one he'd been to weeks ago, where he'd drank too much and sent Dean what he later learned from Guillermo were the instant message equivalent of a drunk dial. It's practically empty, and when they walk in Dean looks at Castiel with his eyebrows raised.

"Kinda quiet for a Friday," he says.

"Nora told me this used to be a dry county," Castiel says, "and a lot of people still treat it that way."

"Huh," Dean says, "least that means we get our pick of the tables."

A man with a guitar is seated in the corner, playing something vaguely familiar, and as they make their way toward the small stage Castiel sees Dean mouthing the lyrics. It warms him, somehow. Reminds him of a long drive, years ago, from Pennsylvania to Maine, when he and Dean had set out to track down Raphael. He sang, then, too. Quietly and under his breath.

Castiel remembers watching him and wondering why it was so pleasant to hear.

He still doesn't quite understand it, except that it's love, and from what he can tell love is something to be understood.

As Dean pulls out a chair at a table not far from the singer, Castiel decides not to try. He loves Dean. He loves to hear him sing, and see him smile, and being by his side. So they'll listen to the music, and he'll keep right on loving him. He feels it. He doesn't need to understand it.

When Dean notices him watching he stops singing and grins, and Castiel remembers what Nora said. _I should just tell him_ , he thinks. His heart thuds hard. He grips the back of the seat he'd been planning to sit in.

"I'll get us some drinks," he says instead, and retreats toward the bar before his mouth decides to act on the reckless impulse.

+++

When they arrive back at his apartment a little after midnight, the couch still stinks of beer and the middle cushion is cold and damp. Dropping loudly onto a dry patch, Dean prods the cushion with his finger. It squelches. He pulls a face.

"Maybe if I flip it over," he says to himself, and it's ridiculous, Castiel thinks.

“Come on,” he says, reaching out to pull Dean back to his feet, and his limbs feel loose, his whole body still buzzing from the alcohol, “we can share.”

Dean blinks at him for a long moment.

“You sure?" Dean asks, and Castiel realizes he's still holding onto his wrist. He can feel Dean's pulse under his thumb, drumming fast. He lets it go and sticks his hands in his pockets. "Won't that be weird?"

“Why would it be weird?"

"Because," Dean starts, but then appears unable to come up with a decent reason.

"It wasn't last time,” Castiel points out, and Dean's face crumples while he tries to remember.

“Oh yeah,” he says finally, and without further discussion they weave their way through the apartment, Castiel switching off lights as they go. While Dean's in the bathroom, Castiel quickly changes into his pajamas and feels his heart beating against his ribs like a caged bird. It only gets worse when Dean walks in to the room, hesitating in the doorway like he's worried Castiel has changed his mind and is going to make him sleep on a wet beer stain.

Castiel tries to smile at him reassuringly. If Dean's reaction is anything to go by, he doesn't quite manage.

"You got an actual bed," Dean says, and Castiel looks at the faded wood frame and it's matching side tables.

"The people who live opposite me were throwing it out," he says, "giving it to me was easier than carrying it to the curb."

Nodding, Dean rubs the back of his neck for a long moment before he seems to snap out of it, and he looks back at Castiel, gaze shifting constantly between him and the bed.

"Which, uh... which side?"

"Oh," Castiel frowns, "I usually sleep on the left."

"Really?" Dean says, and smiles oddly when Castiel nods, "I always take the right."

"That's convenient."

Scratching at the back of his neck, Dean finally moves out of the doorway, and he reaches the right side at the same time Castiel is pulling back the blanket on the left. Their movements are practically synchronised.

Castiel gulps and lays down and finds himself wishing he'd listened to Dean's reservations. Last time hadn't been weird, he realizes, because last time he'd been sick. Just shy of feverish, really. Last time they'd fallen asleep side by side without really meaning to.

This time, they're both a little drunk, and they crawled in next to each other. Arranged the blankets and bumped hands. Fluffed their pillows. It's weird. It feels weird.

Castiel can't decide where to put his arms.

"Dean?" he says after they've both been laying stock still on their backs for what feels like forever, and he can't hear Dean's breathing, "Dean, are you still awake?"

"Yep," Dean replies stiffly.

"Why are you holding your breath?"

Dean swallows loudly.

"Didn't realize I was," he says after a moment, and rolls over, his back to Castiel, "night, Cas."

"Goodnight."

+++

Castiel wakes with a headache, dull and irritating, and he stumbles out of bed before Dean wakes up, desperate for a shower. The hot water is near scalding, but it pushes the knots from his shoulders. Makes his tense muscles calm.

He heads back into his room quietly, sitting on the edge of the mattress to pull on his socks. For some reason it seems imperative that he not be here when Dean wakes up. That he should be out in the kitchen, or on the couch, or anywhere, really. Just not here.

"Mornin'," Dean mumbles from beside him, and Castiel looks over his shoulder to see him squinting in the light streaming in through the cracked blinds.

"Sorry if I woke you."

"Mm," Dean says, and yawns, "s'fine."

Dean waves a hand in the air. Forget it, that hand seems to say, and Castiel wonders if he was being unreasonable in wanting to clear the room before Dean's eyes opened. Returning his focus to his socks, Castiel clears his throat and decides to ask the question he's had in the back of his mind since Dean showed up.

“Are you staying long?”

"If you're not tired of me yet.”

“I'll never be tired of you," Castiel says, turning back around to face him.

He's treated to a half smile for that, and then Dean is standing, stretching his arms up over his head and groaning as his joints pop. A gap forms between trackpants and tshirt. Through it Castiel can see that Dean's stomach is freckled and soft.

He rests his palm against his own waist and wonders if Dean's body is as warm through the cotton.

“You mind if I use your shower?” Dean asks, and Castiel shakes his head, still staring up at him. Lets his gaze skim over the cheek, the nose, the lips he craves to feel against his own. If Dean asks him to, he'll stop looking. For now, he's just tired enough to allow himself this small thing. This simple source of comfort and pleasure that is looking at Dean. He's only here for the day, after all.

Who knows how long it will be before Castiel will get this opportunity again. If ever.

His smile falters as Dean turns and makes his way out of the room, and when he hears the bathroom door click shut shortly after, Castiel reaches out and presses his hand against the blanket where he'd been laying. It's still warm.

That he is here now is enough, he tells himself firmly. It has to be.

***

Castiel takes a long sip of coffee from his mug. As nice as the tea Dean bought him last time turned out to be, he's decided that it's really more of an afternoon drink. Mornings, in Castiel's opinion, are the domain of coffee.

“Your shower's pretty damn good for a building this old.”

Making his way out into the living room, Dean is bright eyed and fluffy-haired. Castiel hums in agreement, taking another sip.

“It was a pleasant surprise when I used it the first time. Though it's not nearly as good as yours.”

“Yeah, I'm pretty sure the bunker has magic showers," Dean jokes, "probably blessed by water elves or something.”

“There are no water elves,” Castiel tells him, pausing for another sip, before he adds as seriously as he's able, “there _are_ sprites and nymphs, but I wouldn't advise you to bathe in any water affected by their magic.”

“Uhuh,” Dean says with an exasperated kind of smile, and as he bends to shove his old clothes into his bag by the couch Castiel lets his eyes wander again. Abruptly, he remembers Nora talking about Gary having _one of those asses_.

Now, looking at Dean in well-fitting denim, he understands exactly what she had meant. Dean, he thinks, has one of those asses, too.

He's still appreciating the sight when Dean straightens up, and Castiel turns away quickly, putting his mug down on the counter and taking a clean one from the dish rack.

“If you're staying, we should do something today,” he says as he pours Dean's coffee, praying he didn't see him staring, and hoping to avoid any questions about if he did. They've miraculously managed to ignore the uncomfortable moment of bed-sharing-weirdness, and he has no desire to stir up another one.

“Sure,” Dean says, taking the offered mug and breathing in the steam before he takes his first sip, “what is there to do in Rexford besides the thriving nightlife?”

Casting around for an idea, Castiel's eyes land on the sign outside the window.

“There's bowling,” he suggests.

“Bowling?” Dean says with a laugh, scrunching his nose, and Castiel suddenly feels foolish.

“Or something else,” he says hastily, “I don't mind.”

“No, no, bowling sounds good. We can bowl.”

“If you don't want to—”

“Cas, really. Let's do it. We'll knock down a few pins, eat some nachos. It'll be fun.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure,” Dean says.

 

***

The bowling alley is awful.

It stinks of feet and hot dogs, and the moment they walk through the doors they can hear nothing but saccharine pop music through crackly speakers and the high-pitched squeak of rented shoes on glossy floorboards. Castiel can't imagine what possessed Gary to invite Nora here on a date.

He glances over at Dean and wonders where he'd take someone on a date, if he ever went on one. Where he might take Castiel if he were so inclined. The thought makes his heart flutter before it makes it freeze, and he swallows down his sadness as they make their way to the counter.

Once they've swapped their shoes over and selected a ball each, they make their way over to lane three.

Dean enters his name in the electronic scoring system as _The Dude_ , and refuses to explain why.

“You've got a TV now,” he says when Castiel asks.

“I've had a TV since last week.”

“No excuses.”

Dean grins, the expression devilish, and Castiel can't find it in himself to be annoyed. His own smile is unavoidable. Dean laughs at him when he tries to hide it, nudging him out of the way so he can take his shot.

“You been here before?” Dean asks, closing one eye as he lines up to bowl.

“No,” he says.

“So what have you been doing on your days off?”

“I go to the library, sometimes. Or to Joe's. But I don't really do much of anything.”

“No more hot dates, then?”

Dean releases the ball, and it knocks over the pins with a clatter. Castiel frowns.

“You already know how that worked out,” Castiel tells him, a little irritated by the topic, “Nora just wanted a babysitter.”

“What about the other one, though?” Dean asks, sinking onto the vinyl-cushioned couch and gesturing for Castiel to take his turn. Instead, Castiel just stands there, squinting at him with the bowling ball in his hands.

“Which other one?”

“ _Which one_?” Dean parrots, suddenly incredulous, “Jeez, Cas. How many have you had?”

“None,” Castiel insists.

“But you texted me,” Dean says, fishing his cell phone out of his pocket and scrolling through, and Castiel turns at once, realizing what he's going to say a moment before he reads it aloud, “ _I'm busy. Making dinner for a girl_.”

He blanches.

“It was Tanya,” he mutters.

“What?”

Closing his eyes, Castiel breathes out. He opens them. Turns back to face Dean with the weight of the purple ball tugging on his fingers.

“I was heating up baby food for Tanya,” he says.

“You made it sound like—”

“I know what I made it sound like,” Castiel says sharply, and takes his first shot. The ball knocks over a single pin on the left side, and he pulls a face.

“Why?” Dean asks.

Castiel shakes his head and waits for his ball to come back so he can try again.

“It doesn't matter,” he says, watching the screen above as it flickers, “the point is, I haven't had any 'hot dates', or any dates at all.”

The ball rolls up, and Castiel leans down to take it. _Tell him_ , he thinks, and silently curses Nora for ever putting the idea in his head. Perhaps, though, he thinks, small steps are the best approach.

“To be completely honest,” Castiel says carefully, “I don't know that I'm even interested in women.”

“Seriously? You're just going to be celibate for the rest of your life?”

Castiel weighs his response for a moment, and decides to just say what he's thinking, consequences be damned.

“I didn't say that. I said I don't think I'm interested in women.”

Dean opens his mouth to respond but nothing comes. He looks away.

“Huh,” he says, and Castiel feels his face growing hot. _Why did I damn the consequences_? he thinks.

“So...” Dean says after a minute, “you... if you're not... does that mean, you um. Have you been on any, uh. Man... dates? With dudes?”

“I think they're still just called dates, Dean,” Castiel says flatly, “and no. Like I said, I haven't been on any.”

“Oh. Good. I mean... just," Dean huffs, rubbing the back of his neck, "it's good that you're not, like... rushing. Into stuff.”

“You're uncomfortable.”

“No! No, I'm not. It's not—it's just—you--”

“I don't want to talk about this with you,” Castiel says, stopping the line of conversation, “can we change the topic?”

Dean's expression is a little offended, but he nods as Castiel bowls again, missing completely.

“Yeah, of course. Sorry.”

When he finally bowls the ball in a perfectly straight line, knocking down every pin, Dean whoops, and the uncomfortable moment seems to have passed. He claps him on the shoulder, grinning, and Castiel smiles at the contact even as he realizes how starved he must be if a casual touch can make him feel so much.

Around noon they buy cheap pizza from the place next door and take it back to Castiel's apartment, where they sit on the floor in front of the couch and watch _Happy Days_ reruns.

Occasionally, Dean's knee bumps against Castiel's, and it's nice, in a melancholy kind of way. He almost forgets that Dean is leaving again.

***

It's mid afternoon when Dean zips his bag closed and hefts it onto his shoulder, scratching at the back of his neck.

“So,” he says, and clears his throat, looking toward the door, “I guess I'll be seeing you.”

“Drive safely,” Castiel tells him, and before he has a chance to process what's happening, Dean's arms are around his shoulders, squeezing. It takes him a moment to realize he should hug back. For a few brief moments, he lets Dean's wamth surround him, breathes in the scent of his leather jacket and his cheap shampoo and his skin.

“Take care of yourself,” Dean tells him, patting his cheek twice as he pulls away, and then he's gone, closing the door and leaving with footsteps that echo back through the building.

For a drawn out minute, Castiel stands in the living room and stares at the closed door, and when he realizes he's waiting for it to open again he runs to the kitchen to get his spare key. He's downstairs before he's fully aware of what he's doing.

“Dean,” he calls out, hurrying toward where the Impala is still parked, “wait.”

The drivers side window is down. Dean's arm rests along it's length, and when he hears Castiel calling him he leans his head out with a furrowed brow. Castiel is a little breathless when he reaches the car, and he gulps in air like he'd been drowning.

“You okay?” Dean asks, and he nods, holding out the key.

“You should keep this,” Castiel says. Dean's brows raise, just barely, and his hand closes around it, “just in case. If you want to come back, or--just. If you want.”

“Yeah,” he says, squeezing the key in his palm, “sure thing.”

There's a look on Dean's face that Castiel can't place. Something pained. Something like the look he's caught on his own face once or twice in the bathroom mirror. The look he has when he's thinking of Dean. He thinks again of that morning after Dean stayed the last time. Of Dean's eyes crinkled and warm as they stared back at him, of the smile he'd had last night when he'd been singing at the bar, of the way his touch always seems to linger. Just a little too long. Perhaps, he thinks again.

“Listen, if you need anything,” Dean says, snapping Castiel out of his thoughts, “just... just say the word, okay? Anything at all. Just tell me what you want and I'll get it to you.”

Castiel doesn't trust himself to speak, so he nods, stepping back from the car.

With another smile, softer this time, Dean gives a half wave and pulls away. Castiel stands out on the road and watches as the tail lights disappear around the corner.

It's barely been five minutes when Castiel picks up his cell and types a message with trembling fingers. It's simple. Brief and unadorned, and yet, without a doubt, he's certain that it will be the most important message he'll ever send.

_**You.** _


	8. Chapter 8

For the first few moments after he sends the message, a thrill runs through him. Electric and humming, an adrenaline high he's barely capable of recognizing. But it fades quickly, and then Castiel just feels dazed. His limbs oddly heavy. His stomach a mess, breath coming too fast, too shallow. 

I'm going to collapse, he thinks, and forces himself to sit down on the couch, focuses as much as he can on regulating his breathing, calming down.

What's done is done, after all.

The message he sent is gone, set loose out in the world, and it's going to be read whether sending it was a mistake or not. There's nothing he can do about it now. Time ticks by with no response, and he watches each minute pass with a dread building in his bones, pulling at his insides. Twisting.

Maybe Dean hasn't seen it, he thinks after ten minutes.

Maybe he has, he thinks after fifteen. 

Maybe he's trying to find a way to let me down easy, he thinks after twenty. Or maybe he's never going to contact me again.

He's going near out of his mind, wavering between certain that he read the signs right and sure that he's just made an utter mess of things, and he can't stop staring at his cell. It buzzes, at last, and he almost drops it before he realizes it's just a text message from Guillermo. Unsure whether he's more relieved or dejected he dumps the phone on the couch without reading it and stands. Walks into the kitchen where he stares and stares at the box of tea still sitting on the countertop and the jar of coffee beside it and the dishes drying on the sink. 

Just like that motel room when he first came to visit, there's little reminders of Dean everywhere. Dean bought him that tea. Dean drank from that striped cup, gave him that cactus that sits on the windowsill and lends the room it's only real color. The couch is where Dean spilled his beer. Where he hugged Castiel and bumped his knee and let him take the last slice of pizza even though he clearly wanted it.

It's too much. With a sigh he clenches his fists, presses them to his forehead as he tries to collect himself; but the air in the apartment is too dense, too warm, too suffocating, and he needs to get out. Needs fresh air and open sky. Needs anything but this stuffy apartment filled with a million reminders of a person it doesn't hold.

On legs that feel like they're made of jelly he hurries toward the door, yanking it open, and stops dead in his tracks because he's here. Dean's here. Standing two feet away, Castiel's spare key raised halfway from his pocket before he drops it, startled by Castiel's sudden presence. It hits the floor with a clatter. 

For a second that draws out and out and out, they stare at each other in silence.

“You got my message,” Castiel says, as if to make certain that it's actually true, and Dean stares at him like a frightened animal, skittish and flighty. He's breathing heavily as though he's run up the stairs. As for himself, Castiel isn't certain he's breathing at all. He swallows against the panic in his chest.

“I, uh...” Dean starts, and his tongue darts out over his lower lip. Castiel can't help but track it's movement. “I stopped. For gas. At the Gas 'n Sip. I mean, that's... I got your message when I was paying for gas.”

“Oh,” Castiel says, and his voice croaks. He breathes in. His hand is still on the door. The key is still on the hallway linoleum. Dean hasn't blinked.

“At the Gas n' Sip,” Dean repeats.

“Yes,” Castiel nods sharply, “that's... where you would do that.”

“Can I come in?” Dean asks, and it occurs to Castiel that it's the first time he's ever bothered. Normally he just barges in, makes himself comfortable on the couch, puts his feet on the table. He's not sure if it's a good sign or not. Whether Dean's nervous because he wants what Castiel does, or because he doesn't know how to tell him no. 

He steps aside, though. Waves a hand toward the couch as though showing Dean where it is. Stoops to pick up the key when Dean forgets to.

When he closes the door with a heavy click, the apartment seems oppressively silent, charged and heavy like the second before a flash of lightning, and Dean is sitting stiffly on the edge of the couch, right on the middle cushion. Castiel approaches cautiously and sits down beside him. Close without having any option otherwise. Dean doesn't look up. Doesn't speak. Castiel puts the key on the table, afraid to hand it to him in case he's decided he doesn't want it after all.

“Do you—” he begins, but Dean turns to look at him before he can finish, and he raises his hand to trace his fingers over Castiel's jaw. It's the slightest of touches, barely there, but Castiel's breath catches in his chest all the same, and only releases when Dean slides his hand back to thread through his hair, to rest his thumb warm on the rise of Castiel's cheekbone. Dean's gaze is heated, and it drops to his mouth for a moment before raising back to his eyes. He looks like he's searching. Hopeful. Castiel leans in to close the distance so he doesn't have to.

This isn't like the other times he's been kissed. 

Dean's lips are warm, and his fingers are curling on Castiel's cheek, stroking down to his jaw, and every touch is hope and regret and gratitude. His sighs are warmth, and his bite is passion, and the press of his lips is love, it's love. With a surge of happiness he can barely comprehend, Castiel gives it back tenfold.

The first slide of Dean's tongue against his own takes him by surprise, and he pulls Dean closer, closer, wanting everything he can give and giving everything Dean could want, and a wave of overwhelming feeling rolls over him, making him pull back to gasp in a breath.

Dean is pink-cheeked and wet-lipped, and Castiel takes in the sight as he catches his breath. I did that, he thinks, a little in awe.

“Wow,” Dean says. Castiel just nods and reaches for him again, grasping his jacket roughly to drag him back, kissing him to make up for every time he hasn't before, for every goodbye and every mistake that's held them apart.

While the couch beneath them creaks, Castiel pushes Dean back and finds himself kneeling to reach him, pressing him down into the cushions.

“Cas,” Dean says, hands trailing hot along Castiel's sides, catching his shirt and exposing the skin of his waist to cool air and long fingers, “I've wanted--”

“You came back,” he breathes, “Dean, I never thought--”

Their words are lost in the stuttered sigh that tumbles from his lips when Dean presses up against him, in the gentle bite against his jaw when they find themselves aligned on the couch from hip to chest. With every kiss they shift a little closer, and it's not long before Castiel feels a stirring in his stomach, low and warm, spreading down to pulse between his legs and making him roll his hips on instinct, pushing them against Dean's to find him in a similar state. He groans, repeating the action, and snakes his hands down to grip Dean's thighs, needing him, wanting him.

Dean arches up against him before suddenly pulling back, and when he speaks the words sound like he's forcing them out against his will.

“Wait, wait,” he heaves in a breath, trembling hands still drifting over Castiel's hips, “we should... maybe we should slow it down a little? Just... with... we should...”

“Okay,” Castiel says, breathing heavily against his neck, his stomach still fluttering, swooping with every touch of Dean's fingers.

“Maybe we should go get some food?”

Lifting off him to kneel on the couch, Castiel catches his breath and nods.

“Okay,” he repeats, and dutifully ignores the insistent ache in his groin that begs him to touch Dean again. To never stop touching him. He pushes off the couch, staring down where Dean still lays, his legs splayed open where Castiel had been draped over him moments ago.

He swallows. Blinks. Breathes. That really happened, he thinks.

“Let me get my coat.”

+++

Dinner was a terrible idea, Castiel decides as the waiter walks away to give their orders to the kitchen. 

Despite the fact that barely ten seconds have passed, he can't actually remember what he ordered. Just that Dean had stumbled over his own request, and that the shape of his mouth as he asked for a beer looked almost like the face he made when Castiel ground their hips together.

The short drive from his apartment was tense and silent, and now he's restless. On edge. He feels his senses heightened, like his body is alert and prepared for danger, and knows innately that Dean's hands would somehow take the feeling away, even if those same hands were the cause in the first place.

But they're here, in a place claiming to serve authentic Italian food despite a visible lack of Italian staff, and Dean's hands are occupied with a glass of water. Catching beads of condensation and swiping them onto a paper napkin.

The thought of sitting here in this overbright restaurant for who knows how long, watching Dean's hands and his lips and his eyes as they alight on a million things that aren't his own skin feels like a bizarre form of torture, and he realizes quite suddenly that he's addicted already. Barely half an hour of fevered kisses and he's not sure how he's survived these past months without them.

He bites down on the inside of his cheek and breathes deeply through his nose. He can no longer taste Dean's lips. The desire to crawl over the table and know their flavor again, to drown in it, to make Dean's voice catch and his hands tremble is strong, so he sits on his own hands. Tells himself that he's being absurd. 

He's existed for millennia without knowing Dean's touch. He can last a few hours in an Olive Garden without becoming a slave to his body's overstimulated limbic system.

Castiel tells himself all this and tries to believe it. But sitting on the opposite side of the booth, turning his glass around and around, Dean's cheeks are still flushed. Against his will, Castiel's mind keeps playing back the reason why.

It doesn't help that Dean is fidgeting constantly, his foot bumping into Castiel's under the table.

The waiter returns with their drinks, and Castiel doesn't even acknowledge him. Just watches as Dean lifts his beer, watches the pulse of his throat as he swallows down half the bottle in one go. He feels like he's on fire.

“I think we should go back to the apartment,” he says when Dean lowers his drink, and though they're not the words he'd been planning to say, they are the first he's managed since they ordered. “That's... not to say that having a meal with you isn't nice,” Castiel adds, shifting in his seat, “I just... Dean, this is very uncomfortable.”

Opening his mouth to respond, Dean seems to reconsider whatever he was going to say, and closes it again. He rubs the back of his neck. Taps on the table.

“Are you sure?” he blurts out, and Castiel feels his brow crinkle, “about this? About us... I mean. I just. I'm a mess, Cas. And you're... you're you. And you're new to all this, and I don't want to take advantage of you if you're just... if this is just...”

“You think I'm mistaken?” Castiel asks, confused, and Dean slumps back in his seat, shrugging.

“It makes more sense than you actually wanting me,” he says with a laugh that sounds less rooted in humor than pain, “than this being real and not just something I wish could be.”

He looks small in this moment. Lost and unsure, and though his low self worth is nothing new, knowing that Dean still considers himself unworthy of love makes Castiel ache down to his core.

“Dean, listen to me,” he says, reaching across the table to catch his hands where they're shredding a napkin to pieces, “Yes, I'm new to all this, and I might be a little naïve about some things, but... the way I feel about you isn't one of them. A lot of the time it's the only thing I'm sure of.”

“Why?”

Their meals are delivered with a clatter, and Dean pulls his hands away as if he's embarrassed, shakes the wide-eyed expression from his face to look up at their waiter. He nods in thanks. Smiles tightly. When the waiter walks away, Dean turns back to Castiel, sheepish.

“And there's exhibit A on the list of reasons you shouldn't bother,” he says, rubbing his face with his hands, “I don't know what the hell I'm doing.”

“We rarely know what we're doing,” Castiel points out, “that's never stopped us before.”

“Yeah, but that was only with the end of the world on the line,” Dean jokes, though it falls flat, “I screw this up, and I'll lose you.”

“You haven't yet.”

“I always screw up. It's inevitable.”

“If you really think that, perhaps we should make the most of it now while we still can.”

“I don't want to hurt you.”

“I'm not made of glass, Dean,” Castiel says, frustrated, as he leans back in his seat to look at Dean through the steam rising from his plate. “Do you remember not long after we met, when you and Sam faced Samhain?”

Dean frowns, but he nods.

“I remember.”

“I sat with you in a park, and you made a joke,” Castiel says, thinking back, “and I laughed, and it wasn't until very recently that it occurred to me that the joke wasn't all that funny. I just thought if I laughed you might do it, too. If I smiled perhaps I'd see yours in return. I wanted to see you happy, even then. Before I even knew what it felt like.” He pauses, taking a breath. “Do I make you happy, Dean?”

“Cas, these days, seeing you is just about the only thing that does.”

The admission is heavy, and it hurts almost as much as it soothes to hear it, but he lays his hand flat on the table in invitation. Palm open and giving Dean the control he needs.

“Then maybe we should do something with that.”

When Dean's hand slides into his, warm skin squeezing, he smiles. It's a start, he thinks. Things are going to be okay.

+++  
They're stopped at a traffic light halfway back to the apartment when Dean puts on the parking brake and leans across the center console to kiss him, and Castiel lets out a startled noise that makes him laugh aloud.

When he pulls away there's a light in his eyes that Castiel hasn't seen nearly often enough. He runs his fingertips over the crinkles at the edges of his eyes and smiles before he moves back in, losing himself in the taste of Dean's lips, the way his hands find their way into his hair to pull him closer, always closer.

A blaring horn from the car behind them makes Dean pull away, smirking, and he waves a hand out the window in apology, moving on through the now green light. He doesn't stop glancing at Castiel the entire drive.

The parking space he'd used earlier is taken, and they end up a block away from Castiel's apartment, walking side by side in the cool night. They're almost there when they reach a bus stop, and Dean pauses, his hand on his pocket as he stands under the blue-white beam of a buzzing streetlamp.

“I gotta call Sam,” he says, “let him know I'll be a day later.”

“Alright.”

It's a moment before Castiel realizes Dean is waiting for him to move away, and he feels a pang of hurt. Despite knowing that Dean is protecting him by keeping him in the dark, he doesn't like it. With a reluctant smile, he keeps walking, glancing back to see Dean sink down onto the bus stop bench. The billboard at his back advertises some kind of perfume, and as Dean puts his phone to his ear, Castiel looks behind him at the image of a barely clothed woman holding out an apple. He can't tell if it's an offering or a temptation to sin. 

He isn't sure he knows the difference anymore. Isn't sure if he cares.

+++

He kicks off his shoes when he gets inside, hanging his jacket on the back of the door, and when he looks around the apartment he's suddenly struck by a rush of nerves. Because Dean is calling Sam. Dean is calling Sam to tell him he's going to be back a day later than planned.

Dean is staying another night.

His stomach swoops, and he hurries into the bathroom without quite knowing why, stopping to look at himself in the mirror. He's flushed already. Face pink and pupils wide, and he wills himself to calm down. They've slept beside each other twice before, and there's no reason to assume that anything more is going to happen.

Except that he wants it to. Except that the way Dean had pressed up against him on the couch earlier tells him that he probably wants it to as well.

Running the cold water, he splashes it over his face, letting the chill of it calm him down. It lasts until he hears Dean unlocking the door, and he emerges from the bathroom to see him shrugging out of his jacket, laying it over the back of the couch.

“How is Sam?”

“Good,” Dean says, dropping the key with his phone onto the coffee table, “except he seems to think cataloguing the books on curses is a valid way to spend time off.”

“He's well, though?”

“Yeah.”

Nodding, Castiel crosses his arms over his chest. Shuffles on his feet. Chews on his lip. He's not quite sure how to proceed from here, and it's a relief when Dean loses his cool, crosses the room in three easy strides to pull him close. He sinks into the kiss with a sigh. Already it feels natural. Right. Like something they've been doing for years.

Dean kisses him like he's been starving for it, and Castiel can relate. Every movement of Dean's mouth feels like something he's been waiting for a lifetime for, and perhaps he has. Maybe he's wanted this even longer than he realized.

“Cas,” Dean murmurs, trailing his lips over his check to settle against Castiel's ear, hand slipping down to clutch at his waist, pulling him in, “do you--”

“Come with me,” Castiel says, and lets his hand weave into Dean's, leading him backwards through the apartment.

He forgets to turn on the light in his room, and they stumble in the dim purple glow of the sign outside, tripping their way to the bed they've shared before but never like this. Castiel is the first to land, but it's not long before Dean follows, making the mattress bounce and groan as he lets out a low oof at the impact. He's suspended over Castiel within seconds. 

Even now, even in shadow, Castiel can see the brightness behind his eyes. There's a nervousness there, too. Something he's certain is reflected back to Dean in his own.

Leaning up, he tries to kiss that fear away, letting his tongue dart out to run along the seam of his lips, and Dean opens to him easily. 

With his hand on the back of Dean's neck, Castiel pulls him closer, deepening the kiss and bringing their bodies flush against one another, but after a few moments of teasing friction, Dean breaks away. The apprehension in his eyes hasn't faded. A surge of guilt overwhelms Castiel when it occurs to him that perhaps he wasn't the only one Dean had been trying not to rush.

“Dean, we don't have to do this,” he says, running his fingers through the short hair at Dean's nape, “we don't have to do anything.”

“No, I want to,” Dean tells him with another brief kiss, his eyes lust-blown beyond the nerves, “It's just... this is going to change things.” Pressing his eyes closed, he leans his forehead down against Castiel's, breathing heavily. “God, it already has.”

“I know.”

Dean opens his eyes, pulling away to look at him.

“You're not worried?”

“Terrified,” Castiel tells him, his stomach fluttering wildly as if to remind him how true it is, “but I think that's normal, if television has taught me anything.”

Dean laughs, and Castiel presses a brief kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“Besides,” he goes on, smiling, “I think change might be a good thing. Change brought us here. Change made me human. Change is what made me realize I'm in love with you.”

He hadn't planned on saying it in so many words—not yet, anyway—but it's true, and it's been true for so long now that the admission slips free without a thought. Dean doesn't say it back. Instead, he lets out a sound of disbelief and claims Castiel's lips again, and it's harder, now. Deeper. There's a kind of desperation in his kiss, a kind of fervent need that makes Castiel's entire body tingle more than words ever could, and when he feels calloused hands sliding up his sides, working their way under his shirt, he can't help but laugh.

“You ticklish?” Dean asks, his voice wavering, and Castiel shakes his head, sitting up to pull the shirt off completely. He throws it blindly toward his closet.

“Just happy,” he says.

Dean's smile grows, blooms across his face, and he lets Castiel slip the buttons of his own shirt free. Shrugs out of worn plaid and immediately pulls Castiel close again to kiss him where they're sitting on the bed's edge. The feel of skin pressed to skin feels safe, Castiel thinks. Like what coming home must feel like. He wants more. Needs more. He's about to shift back, to make an attempt at shuffling out of his jeans, when Dean's knuckles stroke over him, teasingly light where he's already swollen and straining against his fly. His breath comes out on a quiet moan.

He does it again, pressing a little more firmly, and Castiel arches up, pressing against him.

“Dean,” Castiel says, without really knowing what he'd planned to follow it with, and Dean turns his hand, uses his palm to cup his erection, rubbing along the length with his thumb.

“Is that okay?” he asks, low, and it's not until Castiel tries to respond that he realizes his mouth is hanging open.

“Yes,” he nods, panting, “Dean, yes.”

“Can I—” Dean's hand drifts upward to his waistband, and Castiel bats it out of the way, laying back to unzip and yank his jeans away without all the hesitance. It isn't until he hears Dean's breath catch that it fully registers in his mind that he's naked. Exposed completely but for the socks that he never quite got around to removing. 

Dean is practically silhouetted, but Castiel still sees his expression. Dazed and hungry. It's invigorating, thrilling to have that look fixed on him, and he feels the ache between his legs throb, twitch, grow under his gaze. Dean lets out a sound like a whimper as he lurches forward, still half dressed as he kisses him breathless, hands trailing fire along his thighs, his sides, his throat—everywhere but the part of him that's screaming for release.

It's all Castiel can do to keep from begging. Then, he can't even manage that.

“Please,” he says, and he barely recognizes the voice as his own, ragged with want, desperate and rough, “Dean, please.”

With a wicked smile Dean moves again, all traces of hesitation gone as he skims his mouth down over Castiel's throat, his chest, his stomach. With parted lips he sucks a mark against Castiel's tattooed hipbone, tongue tickling warm against the skin.

“I'd been wondering where your ink was,” Dean says, pausing to deliver a bite to the curling Enochian script, “thought about it a lot. Pictured it in all kinds of places.”

Castiel has no idea how to respond to that, but before he can even begin to consider it he feels Dean's hand snake down between his legs, closing around his erection in a grip that feels so different to his own that he very nearly loses himself. Pressing his heels down into the mattress he bends his knees, shifts his hips upward, pushing hard through Dean's fist as it tightens around him, dragging a guttural groan from somewhere deep in his chest.

“God, Cas,” Dean groans, and the sound is like a livewire, the vibration of his voice pitched low sending shivers through his body that bounce back and forth forever.

Soon he can feel slick warmth dripping, running down his length, and when he forces his eyes back open he can see Dean watching his own hand as it works over him in slow, measured strokes. Clumsily, Castiel reaches out for his other hand, finding it pressed into the sheets beside him. He weaves their fingers together as best he can.

Dean looks up at him, catching his eyes, and as he does he slows his hand even more, drawing each stroke out as long as he can. His tongue darts out over his lower lip, a nervous thing, before he turns his gaze back down. Watching his own hand as he pulls Castiel ever closer to the brink of collapse.

“I want to try something,” he says, so low now that Castiel can barely hear him, “but tell me if I mess up, okay? If you don't like it, or— tell me and I'll stop.”

Castiel just nods and squeezes his hand again, incapable of anything that isn't another moan, and his eyes slip shut of their own accord as Dean leans down. He feels warm breath on his thigh, first, and then the cool, wet press of Dean's tongue, dragging a path where his hand had been. He does it again and again, and Castiel can't think. Can't see, even with his eyes wide. Can't make a sound until Dean parts his lips and envelops him, sinking down.

His moan is involuntary, then, the sound tearing out of him like a bird from a cage, and when Dean hollows his cheeks, humming around him, he arches up, up, up, crying out as he tumbles over the edge, spilling between Dean's lips until he pulls away.

Dean's hand is still on him, still stroking slow, and he only lets go when Castiel whines, squirming and oversensitive under his touch.

His heart is racing, and suddenly, when Dean's hand moves away, he becomes aware of sounds outside. Traffic and birds and a distant helicopter. He wonders at how he'd heard nothing of them since Dean started touching him; how he didn't even notice their absence until their renewed presence highlighted it. He's staring up at the window, dazed, when he feels Dean flop down beside him, his hot palm splayed across Castiel's stomach, fingers moving lazily over his sweat-dampened skin.

“You okay?” Dean asks, his voice a little wrecked, a little worried, and Castiel blinks slowly, a loose kind of smile falling into place as he gazes over at him.

“I'm,” he says, and blinks again. Dean's expression turns from concerned to smug in an instant. He grins.

“Did I break you?” he whispers, and Castiel hooks a hand around the back of his neck, pulling him close to kiss him as much as he can with his apparently non-existent muscle strength. Dean laughs against his lips. “I did break you.”

“No,” Castiel tells him, blinking again, “just. Pants.”

The words coming out of his mouth aren't ones that his brain has approved yet, and he frowns as he tries to shake loose the rest of the sentence. When it finally comes, the post-orgasmic haze starting to lift, he pulls back to look Dean in the eye.

“You're still wearing pants.”

Laughing again, Dean throws his head back against the pillow.

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“I want to taste you,” he says frankly. 

Dean's eyes widen.

“You want--”

“Take off your pants,” Castiel says, and Dean doesn't hesitate. Just stumbles from the bed and stands, popping the button free. He steps out of his jeans and boxers in one smooth motion, kicking off his socks on the way. Castiel looks him over and feels his pulse stutter in his chest. He still feels sated and slow, but the vision that is Dean before him does more than enough to bring him back into the moment, and he pushes up to sitting, shuffling forward to perch at the edge of the bed.

Without his clothes on, Dean's body seems to glow. The light tan of his stomach, freckled and soft, reflects the light from the window. Reaching out, Castiel trips his fingertips over it.

“You should switch on the light,” he says, looking up at Dean, “I want to see you.”

“I guess I shouldn't be surprised,” Dean says, and he ducks down to kiss him before moving over to the light switch and flipping it on, washing the room in dull gold.

“Turn around,” Castiel says as he watches him walk back toward the bed, and Dean arches a brow, but does it all the same, stopping a couple of feet away.

Definitely one of those asses, Castiel thinks, dragging his hands down over his lower back, and laughs aloud when he involuntarily wonders if Nora had noticed all those weeks ago. If it's why she thought to mention it about Gary.

Dean looks back at him over his shoulder with a furrowed brow.

“Word of advice, Cas... don't laugh at me while I'm naked.”

“I wasn't,” Castiel says, bringing his hands down to stroke up the backs of his thighs, watching the muscles tense and quiver under his touch, “Mm. I definitely wasn't. I was just reminded of a conversation I had with Nora.”

“What conversation?”

“About great asses,” he says, and Dean hides his face in his hands as he laughs. The motion makes the ass in question tense under Castiel's hands, and giving in to a sudden urge, he delivers a pinch with his thumb and forefinger. When Dean turns his head again to glare at him he ducks down to kiss the reddened skin, and whatever Dean's protest had been, he seems to forget it, his breath coming out in a long whoosh as he turns around fully. Castiel looks up to see his eyes darkened, his pulse visible at his throat. The sight makes Castiel's stomach swoop.

“Lay down,” Castiel says simply.

“Bossy,” Dean replies, but he smirks when he says it, and complies immediately, moving past him and shuffling up toward the pillows. Looking at him, Castiel raises an eyebrow and somehow that makes Dean's face grow pink.

“Interesting,” he says.

“What's interesting?”

“You appear to find my so called bossiness arousing,” Castiel says, and Dean's blush spreads rapidly, creeping down his neck until he's flushed all the way down his chest.

“Stop analyzing me and get over here,” Dean says, visibly squirming, and Castiel can't find it in himself to argue.

Without pause, he crawls toward him, running his palm from Dean's knee all the way to his collarbone, and once he's close enough he catches his mouth in a kiss he can still taste himself in. Dean clutches at him, pulls at his hair, and Castiel straddles him, taking hold of his hands and pushing them down into the pillow on either side of his head.

“Tell me what to do,” he says, pinning Dean's hands down, and Dean blinks up at him, his mouth slack and reddened from the scratch of stubble.

“Do whatever you want,” Dean says unhelpfully, and after a moment Castiel decides that what he wants is to make Dean lose track of the world around him. He wants the sounds outside to fade to nothing. He wants to be the only thing Dean is thinking of in this moment. He just wants Dean.

“I want you,” he says.

“Then do me,” Dean says immediately, then blanches, tensing visibly, “no, wait. Maybe... not. We... next time? Uh. Kiss me again so I stop talking?”

Unable to stop the amused smile from breaking out on his face, Castiel does, and once the tension has eased he moves his lips along the line of Dean's jaw, following it down to the hollow of his throat, the smooth plane of his chest. Without meaning to, he catches the edge of a nipple, and the tiny pleased gasp that tumbles from Dean's lips is enough incentive to do it again. Soon, he's lapping eagerly at the hardened bud, sucking and biting and rolling it between his lips until Dean's breath becomes rapid and shallow, and then he abandons it, choosing instead to watch his face as he skims the tips of his fingernails along his stomach, his inner thigh.

It's mesmerizing, seeing his expression shift, seeing each little hitch of breath as he discovers the places that bring Dean the most pleasure, and when he drags his eyes away from his face to look down between his legs he finds Dean's erection curved upward and dripping, red and swollen and desperate for touch.

Softly, so soft that Dean whimpers, he slides his index finger through the wetness beading at it's head, smoothing it down over heated skin before wrapping his whole hand around the base. His grip is loose, and he keeps it that way, barely skimming the surface while he leans down to kiss and lick at Dean's stomach, at the spot where the slightest touch seems to make him quiver.

If he'd thought kissing was addictive, this, he fears, will be his downfall. Every little motion seems to pull a new sound from Dean, a new wave of tension or desire, and he wants to see every one. Wants to learn all the ways to dismantle him and put him back together.

The flushed skin beneath his tongue is salty with sweat, and he pauses in his ministrations to look up at Dean through hooded eyes, to see the taut line of his throat where his head is thrown back, and he keeps watching as he closes his fist around him more tightly, gripping the base and dragging his hand up to the tip to catch the more of the slick dripping down.

Dean moans, breathless and pleading, and Castiel does it again, slow as he can manage, hoping he can draw this out as long as possible. In the blankets, Dean's fingers clench.

“Cas,” he pants, struggling to push himself up to look at him, “you're—ah.”

He swipes his fingertip back over the sensitive head, rubs at the slit where his arousal is steadily beading.

“What, Dean?” he asks, still watching him, “tell me.”

“Nngh,” says Dean, and Castiel smiles widely.

“I don't know what that means,” he says.

Before Dean can try again, he bites lightly at his inner thigh, laves the skin with his tongue, and moves to lick a stripe up the underside of Dean's erection, catching the bittersweet taste of his arousal where he's rubbed it with his fingers. Dean bucks up beneath him, gasping, babbling nonsense, and Castiel does it again, trying his best to recreate the actions Dean performed on him, and letting his instincts lead him to new ones.

It's not long until he feels hands pulling at his hair, dragging him from where he's suckling at the very tip, and he looks up in concern, certain he's done something wrong until he feels Dean's release pulse hard out over his hand, hitting his chest as he stares up at Dean. He's lost in a silent shout that has his body curved back in a beautiful arc, and when he finally comes down, collapsing against the bed, his smile is beatific.

“Cas,” he manages after a moment, slurring a little as he pulls him up to lay against his chest, “you need to do what you want more often.”

+++

Naked in the kitchen, Castiel takes two glasses from the cabinet and smiles. He runs the water, waiting for it to shift from lukewarm to cool, and looks over his shoulder toward the door to his bedroom. His legs still feel a little shaky, and his stomach muscles are aching with a pleasant kind of burn, and he thinks that given an hour or so he'd like to do it all over again.

There's something hypnotizing about Dean during climax. He wants to experience it as often as possible.

Padding barefoot back into his dark bedroom, still considering the possibilities, he finds Dean sitting with his back against the wall, his face lined with tension. He falters in the doorway.

When he'd left, moments ago, Dean had been laying back against the rumpled pillows, a lethargic, sated grin softening his features. He couldn't look further from it now. Castiel's heart pounds hard. It's not in the way that he wants it to.

“What's wrong?” he asks, and hates that there's a part of him that's suddenly terrified that Dean has changed his mind. That he's decided what they've just done was a huge mistake after all, that he's going to leave again. Leave for good. But Dean looks up at him, and when he sees the expression on Castiel's face he seems to realize what's going through his mind. He attempts a smile. Pats the mattress.

“Nothing,” he says, “come back to bed.” 

Pausing to put the water down on the worn side table, Castiel climbs back under the covers beside him, but Dean doesn't relax.

“Dean,” he says, turning to face him fully, “what is it?”

With his eyes squeezed shut, Dean knocks the back of his head against the wall, and Castiel can see that he's trying. Building up to something he doesn't want to say.

“I didn't tell you everything,” he says, finally, his voice brittle, “about what happened after the trials. About what happened to Sam.”

Pulling the covers up, Castiel looks at him with concern.

“This is the thing you didn't want to talk about,” he guesses, “the reason Sam isn't speaking to me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, but I can't... I don't want to keep it from you. I never did, but especially now, I—” Dean sighs, clenches his jaw. “It's bad, Cas. Really fucking bad. Even for me.”

Resting his hand on Dean's closed fist, he strokes along his fingers until they part, slipping his own between them and squeezing.

“You can tell me. No matter what it is, you can tell me,” he says, and waits while Dean seems to gather his courage.

“The angel that came to help. Ezekiel. He...” Dean trails off, staring down at Castiel's hand wrapped around his own, “he couldn't just heal Sam. He was too badly hurt, too close to death, so he had to... I tricked him. Sam, I mean. I tricked him into saying yes.”

Castiel narrows his eyes.

“What do you—”

“He's still there,” Dean says, and the words seem to fall out of him like a solid weight, like he's been holding onto them for so long he's forgotten how heavy they are, “Ezekiel. He's possessing Sam. He made me tell you to leave. He doesn't want me even seeing you, or talking to you, and I didn't... I didn't want you to go, but he said if I didn't make you leave he'd abandon Sam and Sam wasn't strong enough. He would have died, Cas. I couldn't—”

“Dean, wait.”

Dean stops speaking, slumping back against his pillow, and Castiel tilts his head down to catch his eye.

“Are you saying he's still there? He's still with Sam?” Castiel asks, urgent, and Dean nods.

“He keeps saying he needs more time.”

There's a pit in Castiel's stomach, now. A chasm opening up to swallow him whole. He shakes his head.

“That shouldn't—Dean, if Sam is hosting an angel he should have healed weeks ago.”

“Shit,” Dean says, pressing his eyes closed, “shit.”

From the look on Dean's face, it's clear that it's something he'd suspected, and Castiel can't stand it. Can't stand knowing that he's been bearing this burden alone, trapped in the knowledge that his brother's body is being held hostage and being powerless to stop it. He squeezes his hand again, making him open his eyes.

“Did he say why he wanted me to leave? We weren't close, but he fought on my side in the war against Raphael, and surely he knew I'd never do anything to compromise Sam's healing.”

“He said you were a liability,” Dean says, “that's all. That if you were there, he'd bail to protect himself, and that if he did... if he did, Sam wouldn't survive.”

Castiel leans his head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling, and Dean lets go of his hand. Brings both palms up to his own face and presses them over his eyes.

“We'll figure this out,” Castiel tells him, “there may still be some angels willing to help us or at least give us information. But in the meantime, until I can find out why he's doing this, you need to be vigilant. When you get back there don't act any different, but if he does anything suspicious, anything at all, you need to leave the bunker. Bring Kevin somewhere safe and call me.”

“I will.”

“And Dean, I... I hate to say it, but if that happens, if he realizes we suspect something and he leaves... it may be very difficult to track him down again.”

He says it carefully, pointedly, and he knows from the terse nod Dean gives him that he understands he's talking about Sam, too. It pains him to even think of it. That something should happen to Sam now, after all he's done, all he's been through, is an injustice so extreme that he wonders how he'd ever believed in his father's plan at all.

“Sam doesn't know you're here now, does he?”

Guiltily, Dean shakes his head.

“Every time I've been here since the Rit Zien, I've made something up. This time he thinks I'm hooking up with some waitress in Hastings.”

“Good,” Castiel says, “anything Sam knows, Ezekiel knows. It's best that he has no idea you're in contact with me at all.”

“So you're not pissed that I've been sneaking off to see you like you're some dirty little secret?”

Frowning, Castiel rolls onto his side, draping his arm over Dean's waist.

“I do wish you'd told me sooner,” he admits, “but Dean... I know you felt trapped. Sam's life was on the line.”

For a long moment, there's silence, and in the dim light Castiel can see Dean's jaw twitching, his mouth pulling down at the edges, his eyes lost.

"I don't deserve you,” Dean says quietly, and Castiel shakes his head, pulling Dean to him.

“You deserve everything.”

He kisses his shoulder, tastes the salt of his skin, and keeps going, trailing his lips up over Dean's collarbone and his throat until he reaches his lips.

“Everything,” he repeats, and with his hands framing Dean's face, he kisses him until he believes it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are at the end!
> 
> As you may have noticed, this fic is the first part of a series. 
> 
> Part two, while still written from Cas' POV and containing plenty of Dean/Cas navigating their new relationship, will address the situation with Sam and “Ezekiel” and the fallout surrounding it. I'm not sure when I'll be able to start posting it, but it'll be added to the series on here when I do!
> 
> Until then, thanks for reading!
> 
> -Cass


End file.
